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Updated: May 23, 2025
Now, however incredible what I am going to relate may appear especially as happening to O'Connor, yet it is, I can assure my readers, perfectly true. Terence had been sent on the fore-topgallant-yard what to do I do not recollect, for I was aft at the time when by some means or other he lost his hold and fell over the yard.
I now can scarcely fancy I was so long in the water. I was much struck with the extraordinary coolness of Miles. He afterwards had another escape, which was owing less to his own self-possession, though he took it as coolly as the first. On our passage home, the ship was running with a lightish breeze and almost calm sea across the Bay of Biscay, when Miles was sent on the fore-topgallant-yard.
Six men formed the crew of each boat: four for pulling, and two being officers; one called the boat-steerer, and the other the headsman. Hitherto not a whale had been caught; but they were in hourly expectation of falling in with some. A sharp lookout was kept for them; a man for the purpose being placed at each masthead, while one of the officers took post on the fore-topgallant-yard.
"All hands make sail!" was shouted, and we with the rest sprang on deck. "Aloft, you youngsters!" cried the boatswain, looking at Lancelot and me. We ran up the rigging to the fore-topgallant-yard, and with the aid of two other men let fall the sail which had been furled. On looking ahead, we saw a large ship in the distance, for which the frigate was steering.
"Did you see what a mess the made of fore-topgallant-yard this morning?" An old boatswain's mate of the ship used to tell me one of his "last-cruise" stories, of when he "was in the Delaware, seventy-four, up the Mediterranean, in 1842." Of course, the Delaware had beaten the Congress's time; the last ship always did.
And just then the fore-topgallant-yard carried away luckily as the bow was down-pitched into a trough of sea-and when the slow, confused, and tangled descent was accomplished the big stick lay across the wreck of both bulwarks and of that portion of the bridge between the foremast and the forecastle head. Bert Rhine heard, but could not see, the damage wrought.
Then he would add: "I was in the foretop in those days, and had the fore-topgallant-yard; and if one of us fellows let his yard show on either side of the mast before the order 'Sway across, we could count on a dozen when we got down just as sure as we could count on our breakfast." Flogging was not abolished until about 1849.
The fact of her being hove-to in such a position seemed to point to the conclusion that she was a man-o'-war, and this supposition was confirmed when George took a look at her through his glass from the fore-topgallant-yard.
He was Mulligan Jacobs; and he picked his way back across the wreck of the bridge where the fore-topgallant-yard still lay, and came up to me unafraid, as implacable and bitter as ever. "Jacobs," I whispered, "you are to stay here beside me until we finish the job of smashing the boats. Do you get that?" "As though it could fright me," he growled all too loudly. "Go ahead for all I care.
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