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Updated: June 18, 2025
As the words left my lips there was a ringing report and a smart concussion; and, springing upon the weather rail, I was just in time to see the shot neatly strike the water immediately under the brigantine's figure-head, the spray from it leaping up and leaving a dark stain upon the foot of her foretopmast staysail.
The mainmast had snapped about six feet below the truck; of the other two masts nothing was left but the stumps. He chopped away the wreckage hanging over the bow, including the bowsprit and foretopmast, and had made good progress in clearing away the forward deck when Virginia, standing in the doorway of the after cabin, called him. "Breakfast, Captain," she cried. "Breakfast is served."
A little black flag flew from the foretopmast stay of these ugly visitors, and that was a sign that tobacco and spirits were on sale aboard. The smacksmen went for tobacco, which is a necessity of life to them; but the clever Dutchmen soon contrived to introduce other wares. Vile aniseed brandy liquid fire was sold cheap, and many a man who began the day cool and sober ended it as a raving madman.
The boat, which has already reached the schooner, must have taken a good many, and the mainmast and foretopmast and spars would support the rest, to say nothing of the things they have thrown overboard. There is one wasp the less afloat." No further adventure was met with, throughout the voyage.
"Dearest little girl, it's the easiest thing in the world. You know Schofield is a great hand to carry sail. Well, when you hear about the race, maybe you'll hear that his foretopmast came down in a squall. If you don't, I'll be much surprised, for I've attended to it myself, and I don't think it will take much of a squall.
"It is, indeed, Mr Millons; we've reason to be thankful for that; but I'm sorry to see that we've lost our waist-boat." "We've lost our spare sticks, sir," said the mate, with a lugubrious face, while he wrung the brine out of his hair; "and I fear we've nothink left fit to make a noo foretopmast or a jib-boom."
At last they settled on the foretopmast, whereupon one of the sailors went up to try and catch them. They observed his movements closely, and appeared to be specially interested in his cap; but as he approached, first one and then the other flew away for a few yards, and then returned to his former position.
How the liberation of the ship had come about neither Sweers nor I did then pause to consider. We were sailors, and our first business was to act as sailors, and as quickly as might be we loosed and hoisted the jib and foretopmast staysail, so that the vessel might blow away from the neighbourhood of the dangerous remains of her jail of ice.
"It got wind in the forecastle that something wild, unearthly, hellish, was aloft, and the watch below turned out, too restless to sleep, and all through those hours of darkness the sailors walked the decks in groups, again and again staring up at the foretopmast cross-trees, where the mysterious bulk of blackness sate, squatted, or hung motionless, like some brooding fiend, or incarnation of ill-luck, sinking by force of meditation its curses not loud, but deep, into the bottom of the very hold itself.
At last the sun shining in my eyes awoke me, and looking around, I saw, about two miles or so to the eastward, a brig with her foretopmast gone and maintopsail-yard carried away. The damage had been done, I had no doubt, by the squall which had sent me out of my warm hammock into the cold water. The squall had passed over, and the sea was almost as smooth as glass.
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