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Updated: May 29, 2025
The fire burst through the hatchways, and in a short time began to leap up the rigging. It now became necessary to make arrangements for the saving of the crew. "Nothing more can be done, Mr. Mulroy," said Montague, in a calm voice, that accorded ill with the state of his mind. "Get the boats ready, and order the men to assemble on the quarter-deck."
Yet two minutes sufficed to clear the decks of the Chesapeake, and the few visible survivors were thrown down the hatchways. The guns ceased firing, and the crew below sent up a message of surrender. The frigates had drifted apart, leaving Broke and his seamen to fight without reinforcement, but before they came together again the day was won.
Some time before daylight the wind changed to the north; and commenced blowing hard directly upon the shore, and the sea increased rapidly, oftentimes washing into the hatchways where the men were at work bailing, and it became evident to all, that the vessel could be kept afloat only for a short time longer.
As it was now evident, from the increasing volumes of smoke which ascended through the hatchways, that the fire was working its way aft, although the flames had not yet burst out, it became of the greatest importance to get the powder out of the magazine.
Fire and wreckage parties stood in little groups along the main-deck, and first-aid parties were gathered at the hatchways; two Midshipmen, pale and bright-eyed with excitement, talked in low voices by the foremost gun: gradually a tense hush closed down upon the main deck; the crews stood silent round their guns, waiting in their steel-walled casemates for the signal that would galvanise them into death-dealing activity against the invisible foe.
The remainder of the enemy fled; some leaped down the hatchways, others took shelter on the bowsprit and jib-boom, and the more nimble sprang up the shrouds, where, as my father declared, like so many monkeys, they hung chattering and asking for quarter.
They shouted his name through the hold, but no reply was made. They hunted about in every direction. "He must have gone on deck and stowed himself away somewhere," observed Paul Pringle. Just then Abel Bush said he heard a groan. Going towards the spot, there, coiled up, not far from one of the hatchways, was poor Sam. After calling to him several times and shaking him, he lifted up his head.
Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese cap and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and memorandum-book in hand.
They came from various parts of England in small parties that had never seen one another before. Yet they had not been a couple of hours on board, when they established their own police, made their own regulations, and set their own watches at all the hatchways. Before nine o'clock, the ship was as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.
Up to this moment all had been coolness and order on board the pirate; but when the yards locked, the crew broke loose from all control they ceased to be men they were demons, for they threw their own dead and wounded indiscriminately down the hatchways, to get clear of them.
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