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Updated: June 29, 2025
Once or twice when they stood to windward the smell of the slaves being wafted abaft and reaching the fine gilded poop where the Infanta and her attendants travelled, the helmsmen were ordered to put about, and for long weary hours the slaves would hold the galley in position, backing her up gently against the wind so as not to lose way.
Wherever there be sailors whether of river or sea: whether their way be dark or whether through storm: whether their peril be of beast or of rock: or from enemy lurking on land or pursuing on sea: wherever the tiller is cold or the helmsman stiff: wherever sailors sleep or helmsmen watch: guard, guide, and return us to the old land that has known us: to the far homes that we know.
In many quarters it happened, by reason of the narrow room, that a vessel was charging an enemy on one side and being charged herself on another, and that two or sometimes more ships had perforce got entangled round one, obliging the helmsmen to attend to defence here, offence there, not to one thing at once, but to many on all sides; while the huge din caused by the number of ships crashing together not only spread terror, but made the orders of the boatswains inaudible.
To set forth the dignity of labor, the supremacy of the moral sentiments, the duty of education for the whole people, has been his aim; and he has enjoyed, and made others enjoy, the fact that two men of the people, par excellence, who had no adventitious aids of wealthy friends, or even of educated friends, did, by force of character and native powers of mind, come to be the free choice of this great people for President and Vice-President at a time when a new epoch opened in its history: for even before the war broke out, the "irrepressible conflict" was felt to be upon us, and we needed the best of helmsmen, and the wisest, in that sense of the word wisdom which includes goodness as well as intelligence.
It was noisy down here the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish and surge of the water against the hull; the voices of the men. We passed the boots of the seated helmsmen, and found another hiding place nearer Polter. We could see his giant length plainly. None of the other men were near him. He was reclining on an elbow, stretched at ease on a cushion.
He calculated that the canoe had secured a fifteen miles' start of him, and, estimating as nearly as he could her speed from the glimpse that he had caught of her as she skimmed past the reef earlier on in the day, he doubted very much whether the speed of the catamaran exceeded that of the canoe by more than a couple of miles in the hour, to which might be added or subtracted a trifle according to the relative merits of the respective helmsmen.
The poop was deserted, save for two helmsmen in streaming oilskins under the half-shelter of the open wheel-house. I nodded good morning to them. One was Tom Spink, the elderly but keen and dependable English sailor.
If he'd let her fall off or claw up, the next wave would have made an end of her. He was knee-deep half the time in icy brine, and his hands had split and opened with the frost, but the sweat dripped from him as he clung to the jarring wheel. The helmsmen had another trouble which preyed on them. They were thinking of the three men they had left behind.
The first mate of the Plymouth Adventure and his own two helmsmen saw what was taking place and they were of no mind to be cut off at the stern of the ship. They footed it along the poop and the cabin roof as the pirates were scampering inside and so gained the waist and were with their comrades.
He was left alone to handle the ship while the pirate helmsmen stood by the great tiller. To forsake it meant to let the vessel run wild and perhaps turn turtle in the swollen seas. And so the doughty skipper was, for the time, a looker-on. And now with Ned Rackham in the van, it seemed that the British sailors were in a parlous plight and that their sortie must fail.
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