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Updated: June 18, 2025
Even this amount of canvas, however, reduced though it was, presently proved too much for her; and the commander therefore gave the order to furl the foresail and haul down the foretopmast staysail, a storm staysail being set on the forestay to keep the vessel under steerage way as she tore through the tempest-tossed water like a maddened thing, rolling her gunwales under and pitching sometimes to that extent that she seemed about to dive into the deep never to rise again.
The next glimpse of moonlight showed us her foretopmast hanging over the side. "Well done, my fine fellows!" shouted Captain Rose, "bear a hand, and give them another dose. We must keep them at arms' length as long as we can."
We were becalmed in the Indian Ocean, and the fellow determined to avail himself of the opportunity to go overboard and indulge in the luxury of a salt-water bath; so he got a chum to go up into the foretopmast crosstrees and have a look round.
Thomson, almost by miracle, escaped being lost; but having, in common with the lascars, taken the precaution to lash a rope round his waist, we were able, by its means, to extricate him from danger; at the same time the vessel made an appalling lurch, lying down on her beam-ends, in which position she remained for the space of two minutes, when the maintopmast, followed by the foretopmast, went by the board with a dreadful crash; she then righted, and we were all immediately engaged in going aloft, and with hatchets cutting away the wreck, each of us being lashed with a rope round the waist; ropes were also fastened across the deck, in parallel lines, to hold on by; for such was the violence of the vessel's motion, that without such assistance it would have been impossible to stand.
"The last you will ever give, my fine fellows!" observed Cain, with a sneer. In a few moments the schooner had run a mile astern of the ship. "Now then, Hawkhurst, let her come too and about; man the long gun, and see that every shot is pitched into her, while the rest of them get up a new foretopmast, and knot and splice the rigging."
"See! there's a vessel trying to beat off shore," he exclaimed; and just then a brig with her foretopmast gone came into view, the sail which she was still able to carry heeling her over till her yard-arms seemed almost to touch the foaming summits of the seas. "She'll not do it, I fear," said Jack, after they had been watching her for some time. "It's a wonder she doesn't go right over.
A general discharge from a broadside of carronades, and a heavy volley of muskets from the Portuguese, was the decided answer. The broadside, too much elevated to hit the low hull of the schooner, was still not without effect the foretopmast fell, the jaws of the main-gaff were severed, and a large proportion of the standing as well as the running rigging came rattling down on her decks.
Nor was our deck once clear of ice and snow during all the time. Our duty was to visit as many fleets as we could, and arrange with some reliable vessel to take a stock of tobacco for the use of their special fleet. The ship was to carry about six feet of blue bunting on her foretopmast stay, a couple of fathoms above her bowsprit end, so that all the fleet might know her.
"Land! land on the starboard-bow!" was shouted from the foretopmast cross-trees, where several of our men had been, in spite of a pretty hot scorching sun, since dawn, on the look-out for it. "Who saw it first?" asked the captain, who was always more anxious when nearing the coast than at any other time. "Tom Tillson," was the answer from aloft.
Her boats were gone; her bulwarks in many places stove in; and her bowsprit and foretopmast had been carried away, while, of course, still more serious damage had been sustained in her hull. "Shall we be able to do anything for all those poor people?" I asked of Peter, who stood near me. "No, Jack, we shall not," he answered; "man can't help them.
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