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Updated: May 12, 2025
As they crashed heavily into them, the men leapt from their seats and sprang over into the small boats, threw off the painters, and rowed astern, opening on either hand to allow the second line of fire ships to pass. These, by Gervaise's directions, divided, and three bore along on either side of the corsairs, and then ran in among them, throwing grapnels to fasten the fire ships alongside.
The two brigs dropped alongside each other, head and stern, and would soon have scraped clear again, but the French threw their grapnels into our rigging the instant that we dropped alongside, and immediately boarded.
In vain the French attempted to bring the ships alongside each other by throwing grapnels; the ropes of these were cut directly they fell, and although many of the English spears were hacked in two, others were at once thrust out, and the spars, being inclined so as to meet the hull of the enemy below the water- line, could not be reached by their axes.
"We are in no condition to sport with stock-and-fluke; have every thing ready to let go at a word; and see the grapnels ready, we will throw them aboard the smuggler as we close, and take him alive. Once fast to the chain, we are yet strong enough to haul him in under our scuppers, and to capture him with the pumps! Is the signal still abroad, for a pilot?"
Ludlow looked, in vain, for the spars, in order to ascertain in which direction the head of the brigantine lay; but, trusting to luck, he saw that the decisive moment was come. "Starboard, and run him aboard! Away there, you boarders, away! Heave with your grapnels; heave, men, with a long swing, heave!
They paddled up alongside without the slightest suspicion of danger, and three or four of their number in the first canoe were clambering up the side when they suddenly sprang overboard, just as three or four grapnels with light chains were thrown from the bulwarks over the canoes so as to catch their outriggers, and capsize them.
Keep your head sail aback to deaden our way, or we shall never get the grapnels to hold. Stand by there to larboard to heave your grappling irons. Archers and musketeers, discharge me a volley upon the decks of yonder ship; and, gunners of the larboard battery, be ready to fire a broadside of ordnance, great and small, into her at the moment when you feel us touch.
In their surprise at what they beheld the pirates had not thrown their grapnels at the proper moment, and now the two vessels had drifted still farther apart. Presently Ben Greenway came hurrying to the side of the merchantman, dragging its captain by the hand. "Master Bonnet! Master Bonnet!" he cried; "this is your old friend, Abner Marchand, o' our town; an' this is his good ship the Amanda.
Their arms had been served out at the beginning of the contest, and they now seized them, and gathered in readiness to take part in the fight. The two Genoese galleys had thrown their grapnels and made fast, one on each side of Pisani's galley. The bulwarks were stove in and splintered as the vessels rolled, and the rigging of the three ships became entangled.
No sooner was the grapnel down than the ship was anchored; and then came such a business: ship's engines going, deck engine thundering, belt slipping, fear of breaking ropes: actually breaking grapnels. It was always an hour or more before we could get the grapnel down again.
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