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Updated: May 28, 2025
And these first desultory grapplings with the fugitive airy images that flit through the dim chambers of the brain had become with each effort more sustained and vigorous, till the phantoms were spelled, the flying ones arrested, the Immaterial seized, and clothed with Form. Gazing on his last effort, Leonard felt that there at length spoke forth the poet.
The helm was then put gently over to port, and she swept round in a long graceful curve, during which the whole of her canvas was very smartly hauled down and clewed up, finally coming up head to wind, and gradually losing way, she ranged alongside her antagonist the distance having been most accurately measured by the skipper and the grapplings were instantly thrown and secured.
There being too much wind for towing the praams in the usual way, they were warped to the rock in the most laborious manner by their windlasses, with successive grapplings and hawsers laid out for this purpose.
His failures were of several sorts, I know not which the truest: that he come with so strong a gale of wind, that his grapplings would not hold; that he did come by their lee; whereas if he had come athwart their hawse, they would have held; that they did not stop a tide, and come up with a windward tide, and then they would not have come so fast.
"Nearer, you porpuss-faced swab," cried the commodore, "nearer by twelve fathom: but, howsomever, that's enough to prove the falsehood of Hatchway's jaw and so, brother, d'ye see," turning to Pickle, "I lay alongside of the Flour de Louse, yard-arm and yard-arm, plying out great guns and small arms, and heaving in stink-pots, powder-bottles, and hand-grenades, till our shot was all expended, double-headed, partridge and grape: then we loaded with iron crows, marlin-spikes, and old nails; but finding the Frenchman took a good deal of drubbing, and that he had shot away all our rigging, and killed and wounded a great number of our men, d'ye see, I resolved to run him on board upon his quarter, and so ordered our grapplings to be got ready; but monsieur, perceiving what we were about, filled his topsails and sheered off, leaving us like a log upon the water, and our scuppers running with blood."
Fouled with the clutchings and grapplings of the attack, besmirched with the elbowing of low associates and obscure allies, he set his feet toward conquest, and mingled with the marchings of an army that surged forever forward and back; now in merciless assault, beating the fallen enemy under foot, now in repulse, equally merciless, trampling down the auxiliaries of the day before, in a panic dash for safety; always cruel, always selfish, always pitiless.
Our boats were now moored with grapplings, and so hot a dispute took place among some of our officers, that they were heard on shore; but as the Spaniards did not understand what they said, an English prisoner was brought to the shore to interpret what they heard. By the time he came, the dispute was over; but this Englishman afterwards joined us, and gave us this account.
Now was the moment for Charles, who, giving his men the signal, sprang at their head on board the opposing vessel, while some seized the arms which had been left in profusion on her deck, and with which they soon overpowered the few men left on board; the others, by a simultaneous movement, relieved her from the grapplings which united the two vessels.
Once in a lifetime for every youngling climbing the facile or difficult slope of the years there comes a day of realization, of a sudden extension of vision, of Rubicon-crossing from the hither shore of joyous and irresponsible adolescence to that further one of conscious grapplings with the adult fact.
Then I remember observing the pirate ship, which had approached us closer and closer, come with a louder crash than any previous sounds alongside. Grapplings were thrown on to our bulwarks, then a score or more of ruffianly looking fellows with hangers flashing leapt down on our decks.
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