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Updated: June 3, 2025
Suddenly there swept down from a bluff above us, on the Georgia side, a mingling of shout and roar and rattle as of a tornado let loose; and as a storm of bullets came pelting against the sides of the vessel, and through a window, there went up a shrill answering shout from our own men. It took but an instant for me to reach the gun-deck.
Under the great lantern in the prow they saw the black figure of the other sentry, pacing on the forecastle. From below sounds reached them of the orgy on the gun-deck: a rich male voice was singing an obscene ballad to which the others chanted in chorus: "Y estos son los usos de Castilla y de Leon!" "From what I've seen to-day I can well believe it," said Mr.
Ten pieces out of thirty were disabled; the breaches in the side of the vessel were increasing, and the corvette was beginning to leak. The old passenger having gone down to the gun-deck, stood like a man of stone at the foot of the steps. He cast a stern glance over this scene of devastation. He did not move. It seemed impossible to take a step forward.
My station was at the third gun from the head of the ship, on the starboard side of the lower gun-deck close by where the cable passes. The water then rushed in at nearly all the port-holes of the larboard side of the lower gun-deck, and I directly said to Carrell, "Ned, lay hold of the ring-bolt, and jump out of the port-hole; the ship is sinking, and we shall all be drowned."
And it is a weary thing, Captain Claret, to be imprisoned month after month on the gun-deck, without so much as smelling a citron. Ah! Captain Claret, what sings sweet Waller: 'But who can always on the billows lie? The watery wilderness yields no supply. compared with such a prisoner, noble Captain, 'Happy, thrice happy, who, in battle slain, Press'd in Atrides' cause the Trojan pain!
When the roll had been called the various division commanders reported to the executive officer, who always has charge of the gun-deck in action, and he approached the bridge on which the captain was standing, saluted with his sword, and said: "All present or accounted for, sir." "Very good, sir," answered the captain, giving the officer the paper he held in his hand.
Tickell soon came back reddish, but grinning, to say that nothing less than the captain would do. Dodd sighed, and dismissed Monk with a promise to inspect the gun-deck himself; then went down to Mrs. Beresford and found her indignant. Why had he stopped the ship miles and miles from Macao, and given her the trouble and annoyance of a voyage in that nasty little boat?
The Almirante Oquendo, equally punished, followed the same example, a mass of flames shrouding her as she rushed for the beach. The Vizcaya was the next to succumb, after a futile effort to ram the Brooklyn. One shell from the cruiser went the entire length of her gun-deck, killing or wounding all the men on it.
Though old seventy-fours and old frigates are converted into chapels, and launched into the docks; though the "Boatswain's Mate" and other clever religious tracts in the nautical dialect are distributed among them; though clergymen harangue them from the pier-heads: and chaplains in the navy read sermons to them on the gun-deck; though evangelical boarding-houses are provided for them; though the parsimony of ship-owners has seconded the really sincere and pious efforts of Temperance Societies, to take away from seamen their old rations of grog while at sea: notwithstanding all these things, and many more, the relative condition of the great bulk of sailors to the rest of mankind, seems to remain pretty much where it was, a century ago.
Mrs. Beresford had just come on deck to enjoy the balmy morning. "Sharpe," said Dodd, in a tone that conveyed no suspicion to the new-comer, "set the royals and flying jib. Port!" "Port it is," cried the man at the helm. "Steer due south!" And, with these words in his mouth, Dodd dived to the gun-deck.
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