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Updated: May 12, 2025
I climbed without difficulty into the fore-chains, the snow being so hard that my feet and hands made not the least impression on it, and somewhat warily feeling the government of a peculiar awe, mounting into a sort of terror indeed stood awhile peering over the rail of the bulwarks; then entered the ship.
We scrambled for the last time along the life-line and got into the fore-chains; but to our consternation, saw the boat rowing away from the wreck. However, the fit of rage and terror that possessed me lasted but a moment or two; for I now saw they were giving chase to the madman, who was swimming steadily away.
I pulled up my boat with the others belonging to the ships of the fleet, in obedience to the orders of the officer superintending, close to the fore-chains of the ship. In about half-an-hour afterwards the prisoners made their appearance on the scaffold, the caps were pulled over their eyes, and the gun fired underneath them.
The next instant there came a crash, our boat had been run down, but before she sank, having been happily struck by the bow, and not by the stern of the ship, we found ourselves alongside, when Martin, seizing me by the arm and catching hold of the fore-chains, hauled me up as the boat disappeared beneath our feet.
With his glass he could see that there was a hand in the fore-chains heaving the lead; and probably Captain Breaker feared that the bottom "might be too near the top of the water" for the draught of his vessel, and he was proceeding with caution. Christy descended the ladder to the main-deck. He found Captain Pecklar in the fire-room, shovelling coal into the furnace.
While we were thus stealing along pleasantly enough under the genial influence of this newly-found air, which as yet was confined to the upper sails, and every one was looking open-mouthed to the eastward to catch a gulp of cool air, or was congratulating his neighbour on getting rid of the tiresome calm in which we had been so long half-roasted, half-suffocated, about a dozen flying-fish rose out of the water, just under the fore-chains, and skimmed away to windward at the height of ten or twelve feet above the surface.
It was not a moment to start sheet or tack. Every one, indeed, was engaged in the desperate conflict with their assailants. Jack was rushing forward to drive back some fellows who had just hooked on their canoe at the lee fore-chains. The marines were thrusting away with their bayonets.
Towards the afternoon part of the starboard bulwark was carried away by the shock of a heavy sea, which made the ship broach-to, and before she could answer her helm again, a sea broke through the fore-chains, and swept away the caboose and all its utensils from the deck; fortunately for the cook he was assisting at the pumps at the time, or he inevitably must have shared the same fate as his galley.
Jack's plan was to pass the brig to windward, and having got well on her bow, to brail the sail, and drift down upon her, expecting to fall in alongside, abreast of the fore-chains, into which he had intended to help Biddy, and to ascend himself, when he supposed that Mulford would again make sail, and carry off his mistress.
Then Joe Cross's cry, "All aboard!" rang out, followed by a stentorian cheer, and amidst the rush and hurry the tiller slipped from the boy's hand and he was climbing over the thwarts to spring into the fore-chains.
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