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Updated: May 22, 2025
There she lay, with her clear black bends, and bright white streak, and long tier of cannon on the maindeck, and the carronades on the quarterdeck and forecastle grinning through the ports in the black bulwarks, while the white hammocks, carefully covered by the hammock-cloths, crowned the defences of the gallant frigate fore and aft, as she delved through the green surge one minute rolling and rising on the curling white crest of a mountainous sea, amidst a hissing snowstorm of spray, with her bright copper glancing from stem to stern, and her scanty white canvas swelling aloft, and twenty feet of her keel forward occasionally hove into the air and clean out of the water, as if she had been a sea-bird rushing to take wing and the next, sinking entirely out of sight hull, masts, and rigging behind an intervening sea, that rose in hoarse thunder between us, threatening to overwhelm both us and her.
He laid himself down in the hammock-cloths, for an hour or two, towards morning though the wind did not sigh through the rigging louder than common, without arousing him from his slumbers. At each low call of the officer of the watch to the crew, his head was raised to glance around the narrow horizon; and the ship never rolled heavily without causing him to awake.
Under such circumstances, the great object was to keep on the track of the chase, during the time when she must necessarily be hid from their sight. Ludlow walked into the lee-gangway of his ship, and, leaning with his elbow on the empty hammock-cloths, he gazed long and in silence at the object of his pursuit. The Water-Witch was lying in the quarter of the horizon most favorable to being seen.
"They are getting ready to fire again," was now reported from the foreyard. "Here, Rattlin," continued the captain, "take my glass, seat yourself upon the hammock-cloths, and tell me if you can make out what they are about."
As it was, we beat out with flying colours, and anchored a few miles from the light. These were the first shot I ever saw fired in anger. Our brig had one man killed and three wounded, and she was somewhat injured aloft. One shot came in not far from my gun, and scattered lots of cat-tails, breaking in the hammock-cloths.
I do not wonder at my poor father's senses being dazzled, for, as he said to me, "You see, Jack, after being used to see nothing but Point women, all so slack in stays and their rigging out of order, to fall aboard of a craft like your mother, so trim and neat, ropes all taut, stays well set up, white hammock-cloths spread every day in the week, and when under weigh, with a shawl streaming out like a silk ensign, and such a rakish gaff topsail bonnet, with pink pennants; why, it was for all the world as if I was keeping company with a tight little frigate after rolling down channel with a fleet of colliers; but, howsomever, fine feathers don't make fine birds, and handsome is as handsome does."
Double awnings and snowy hammock-cloths restricted the view shoreward from the quarter-deck chairs, and surprise as deep as that which greeted the girl surged through the disputing three at a great splashing over the side, accompanied by the boom of a voice that must come from a powerful, free-breathing chest.
"I rather fancy not, Sir Gervaise," answered Bunting, looking drolly at the boiling element that gushed up each minute from beneath the bottom of the ship, in a way to appear as high as the hammock-cloths. "The people at the main-deck guns would have rather a wet time of it." "Bend on the signal, sir, for the ships astern to keep in the vice-admiral's wake.
It was made of beautiful Russia duck, and, to be sure, didn't we make a gang of white hammock-cloths fore and aft, besides white trousers for the men? Well now, you must know, that we make Uncle George suffer for the stores, so I mean to make dad suffer for my traps. I mean to lose my chest overboard, with all my `kit, and return home to him and the old woman just fit for the fashion."
In the day-time, the pitch in the seams of the upper-deck began to melt, and, by sticking to the soles of our shoes, plastered the planks, to the great discomfiture of the captain of the after-guard. The tar, oozing from the cordage aloft, dropped on our heads, speckled the snow white boat covers, and obliged us to spread the hammock-cloths, to prevent the bedding being ruined by the spots.
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