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Updated: May 3, 2025
Dermot was shown how the hammocks were hung up at night, and where they were stowed in the hammock-nettings in the day time. He gazed aloft at the symmetrical yards and ropes, and wondered at the perfect order which reigned around; so different to what he had been accustomed to in the small fishing-vessels and coasters, the only craft with which he was acquainted.
There were wide openings in the hammock-nettings that he had not seen there in the morning, and the ports, through which two of the broadside guns worked, had been torn into one.
I had fallen in a line with the main-mast; I now found myself nearly abreast of the mizzen-mast, the frigate slowly gliding by like a black world in the water. Her vast hull loomed out of the night, showing hundreds of seamen in the hammock-nettings, some tossing over ropes, others madly flinging overboard the hammocks; but I was too far out from them immediately to reach what they threw.
The fury of the gale increased. Sail was taken off the ship, but still it was necessary to carry far more than would have been set under other circumstances, that she might, if possible, beat out of the bay. She was pressed down till the hammock-nettings were almost under water. Still her masts stood, but no one could predict how long they could bear the terrific strain put upon them.
To begin with, a horrid little monkey belonging to the crew amusing himself running about in the hammock-nettings near to the gangway over which the great man had to pass seeing something he thought unusual, made a rush as the commander-in-chief was stepping on board, stooped down, and deliberately took the cocked hat off his head, dropped it into the sea, then started up the rigging chattering with delight at the mischief he had done.
These intrepid fellows merely knew that a man had fallen overboard, and that was all; so away they leaped out of the ports and over the hammock-nettings, without knowing whereabouts the object of their Quixotic heroism might be.
Nearly all our ammunition was spoiled, and, in order to preserve the dry provisions, we were compelled to stow them in the hammock-nettings. Having transferred forty men from the other ships to assist at the pumps, we quitted Fonseca bay on the 28th, and on the 6th of January, 1822, arrived at Tehuantepec, a volcano lighting us every night.
Many who had gone below hearing that there were boats alongside, came up with the hopes of escaping. When the already overloaded boats pulled away their rage and despair knew no bounds. They were seen standing on the hammock-nettings, or in the mizzen rigging, shaking their fists and uttering the most dreadful imprecations on the heads of those whom they considered were deserting them.
"Oh, Terence, it must be Murray!" exclaimed Jack, almost falling off the hammock-nettings overboard. "And yet, no, it can't be; it must not be. Who is he, that midshipman?" shouted Jack; but the boat was already at some distance, and the people in her did not hear the question asked. The report soon got about the decks that Murray was killed.
It was a fine old countenance, down the sides of which that silver hair hung so patriarchally and gracefully; and there that poor old man stood, bowing in his wretchedness and his bereavement, with his money extended, to every officer that he could catch a glimpse of as his hat or head appeared above the hammock-nettings or the bulwarks.
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