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Updated: June 18, 2025
When way was resumed, it was again under the very leisurely canvas of topsails and foresail. By this had occurred the incident of the Intrepid losing her foretopmast.
Between them the moon fitfully shone occasionally and an odd star or two peeped out here and there; while our good ship was bowling along under her topgallants, which had been set again by the commander over the double-reefed topsails, with her courses and jib and spanker, and the foretopmast staysail, continuing under the same canvas during the night, without hauling a sheet or tautening a brace, the wind hardly shifting half-a-point all the while.
I first met Yorke early in the "seventies." Our vessel had run in under the lee of the South Cape of New Britain to wood and water, and effect some repairs, for in working northward through the Solomon Group, on a special mission to a certain island off the coast of New Guinea, we had met with heavy weather, and had lost our foretopmast.
There's death right astern for all of us if you delay. Then the captain himself took the helm, the rudder-head being twisted, and the spirit and energy of the Deal men infused new life into the wearied crew, and all hands worked together with a will. They loosed the fore-topsail and they set the foretopmast staysail.
The exclamations and comments of the men at the gun were stopped abruptly by the orders to let the ship fall off and fire a broadside. The Waterwitch trembled under the discharge, and then a loud cheer arose, for the immediate result was that the vessel of the enemy which had hit them was partially disabled her foretopmast and flying jibboom having been shot away.
The moment that her starboard broadside could be brought to bear upon us she fired; and the next moment our bowsprit and foretopmast both went, the former, with the flying-jib, towing under the bows, while the latter dangled to leeward by its rigging, with the royal towing in the water alongside.
The helm was put up, and the brig was soon run out of the fire; not, however, until a few more shot were pitched close to us, and one carried away the foretopmast backstay.
"What was the signal agreed upon?" asked the first speaker of his companion, who was silently regarding the schooner. "A red flag at the foretopmast head, and there it goes. Yes, it is here sure enough." "How like a witch she looks." "They say she will outsail anything between here and Gibraltar, in any wind." "What does that mean? she's going about."
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.
Obliged thus to throw off the mask, we at once did the same, the hands who had been standing by, waiting for orders at the same time springing into the rigging to loose our additional canvas; and by the time that the little hooker was fairly round on the starboard tack, and the yards swung, our topgallant sail and gaff-topsail were sheeted home and in the act of being hoisted, together with the flying- jib, foretopmast staysail, and main and maintopmast staysails, while the fore tack was being boarded and the sheet hauled aft.
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