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Updated: June 17, 2025
Johnstone then ordered him to come out anyhow, which he did, and his fore topmast shortly went overboard. The disability of this ship so weighed upon the Commodore that his pursuit was exceedingly sluggish; and the French kept drawing him away to leeward, the Annibal having got a bit of canvas on a jury foremast.
I clung to the wooden hood, naked to the waist, and swept continually by the spindrift from the seas which met the vessel. As my eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness I could distinguish the outlines of the machinery on deck, the foremast and the companionway forward of the superstructure.
Boats and boatmen were in great demand at Whitestone and other places on the river, and the Isabel promised to bring in a fortune to her owners during the summer months. A few days later, she was employed in carrying parties out upon excursions, with Dan as skipper, old Ben as pilot, and Cyd as foremast hand.
Most of the crew were already drunk, but they had the sense to chain me by one leg to the foremast, and then made me run back and forth between them and the barrel. I was only too glad. No cannikin was skimped while I was at the spigot. I looked around and remembered some of the wild nights we had seen on the old Revenge.
A few minutes more, and the foremast passed through the same metamorphose, leaving the "Sea Witch" a three-masted schooner, with fore and aft sails on every mast and every stay. All this had been accomplished with a celerity that showed the crew to be no strangers to the manouvres through which they had just passed, each man requiring to work with marked intelligence.
The palm-oil, also, which is like very thick red mud, had coated the whole deck from before the foremast nearly as far aft as the mainmast, making it more slippery even than ice, so that no one could either stand or walk on it.
Now, however, that the foremast was destroyed, it was no longer possible to handle her in this way, and the only plan that suggested itself was to launch her bodily off the deck, afterwards bailing out such water as she would probably ship during the operation.
The countenances of the negroes who were thus employed appeared inflamed, as if their wrath was excited; now and then they laughed at each other, and looked more like demons than men. That some dreadful punishment was about to be inflicted I was certain and I remained crouched behind the foremast on the lower-deck.
The commander had hitherto not left the ship. The last of the crew who had remained with him were sent into the boat. His own gig was alongside. With a heavy heart he hauled down the flag, which had hitherto been kept flying on a temporary flagstaff, secured to the stump of the foremast. After looking round his dismantled ship, he descended into the boat.
The skipper likewise secured the ship's papers and removed the compass from the binnacle; while I, of course, did not forget my sextant and a chart or two which Captain Billings told me to take. The foremast hands having also selected a small stock of useful articles, all of us were ready to leave the vessel as soon as she gave us notice to quit.
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