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Updated: June 17, 2025
At this moment the Achille bore down on the Brunswick’s quarter, but was received by a tremendous broadside, which brought down her remaining mast, a foremast. The wreck prevented the Achille from firing, and she surrendered; but as the Brunswick was too busy to attend to her, she hoisted a sprit-sail—a sail put up under the bowsprit—and endeavoured to make off.
The crew, obedient to his orders, rushed forward to secure the bowsprit with lashings; while the boatswain, with another gang, lost not a moment in setting up fresh stays, to prevent the foremast being carried away. This, with the loss of one of the boats, and the forepart of the bulwarks stove in, were the chief damages hitherto received by the Dragon during the gale. It was not over, however.
At this moment Count d'Artigas, Engineer Serko and Captain Spade go forward and perform some manoeuvre that is inexplicable to me. I walk along the port side of the deck until I am near the foremast, and then I can see a small buoy that the sailors are hoisting in. Almost immediately the water, at the same spot becomes dark and I observe a black mass rising to the surface.
The head sea, choppy as compared with her great length, dealt the Titan successive blows, each one attended by supplementary tremors to the continuous vibrations of the engines each one sending a cloud of thick spray aloft that reached the crow's-nest on the foremast and battered the pilot-house windows on the bridge in a liquid bombardment that would have broken ordinary glass.
The fore-sheets were heaped with sacks of flour, onions, and potatoes, perched among which was Huish dressed as a foremast hand; a heap of chests and cases impeded the action of the oarsmen; and in the stern, by the left hand of the doctor, sat Herrick, dressed in a fresh rig of slops, his brown beard trimmed to a point, a pile of paper novels on his lap, and nursing the while between his feet a chronometer, for which they had exchanged that of the Farallone, long since run down and the rate lost.
“Then we must get up a sort of derrick. There are plenty of blocks and ropes on that foremast. The difficulty will be about light spars. We shall have to go ashore and cut down two or three young trees to make our tripod with. “I think, captain, we had better make up our minds to live on board until we have got this job done.
We were buried, choked, and half drowned; but when the wave had passed on, the main and mizzenmasts, unsupported by the rigging that I had cut away, snapped cleanly about three feet above the deck, and the broad, flat-bottomed craft straightened up, lifting the weight of the foremast and its gear, and lay on an even keel, with foresail, staysail, and jib set, the fore gaff-topsail, flying jib, and jib-topsail clewed down and the wreck of the masts bumping against the port side.
The men say that he always thought it sinful to desert a wreck, and that he did not even strike out once for his life, though he has been known to swim an hour, when a whale has stove his boat. God knows, sir," added the boy, hastily dashing a tear from his eye, by a stolen movement of his hand, "I loved Tom Coffin better than any foremast man in either vessel.
Looking round me, I perceived that we were at no great distance from the wreck of the foremast, and I thought if all hands could only reach it, we might be able to construct from it and the spars attached to it a raft of sufficient capacity to accommodate us all in some degree of comfort and safety.
But she had not suffered these injuries without inflicting some in return. The "Enterprise" was much cut up aloft. Her foremast and mainmast had each been pierced by an eighteen-pound ball. Her captain lay upon the deck, gasping in the last agonies of death, but stoutly protesting that he would not be carried below until he received the sword of the commander of the "Boxer."
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