Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 13, 2025
At all events he shortened sail in a most determined and workmanlike manner, threw open all his ports, and, slightly shifting his helm, made as though he would slip in between the Dolphin and the Indiaman.
It missed fire, and the assassin was instantly shot dead by an Englishman. About two hundred of the unfortunate strangers made a gallant attempt to return to their own country. They seized a richly laden East Indiaman which had just arrived in the Thames, and tried to procure pilots by force at Gravesend.
He looked rather glum, however, half an hour afterwards, when the same voice bawled that she was a bull-dog looking craft, schooner-rigged, and pierced for sixteen guns. The Yankee had hoped to fall in with a fat West Indiaman, instead of which he had now to deal with a man-of-war, carrying, perhaps, a larger weight of metal than himself.
During the voyage one pair of eyes, at all events, kept a bright look out for any sail of the appearance of the "Osterley" Indiaman. The second lieutenant was continually going aloft, spy-glass in hand, sweeping the horizon. Some of his shipmates might have suspected the cause, but he gave no reason for this practice which he had adopted.
"Why, Captain Keene, if we had hoisted English colours, the schooner would have made sail and gone off, and, even if she had not done so, the Indiaman would have held out till we came down; but as he hauled down his colours, and was taken possession of by the enemy, he now becomes a recapture, and I expect the salvage of that Indiaman will be of more value to us than two or three of such schooners."
"Enable us to recover them, and you need have no fear on that score." The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders, and protested that he had had nothing to do with the capture of the Indiaman; that he had been put in charge of her by others to carry her home, and, moreover, that he knew nothing of the passengers, except that he had been assured that they were in safety.
Fortunately, her hull was quite uninjured, the whole of the damage done being to the upper works. Our first task was to clear away the wreck of the foremast, the skipper hailing me soon after I had boarded to say that he intended the Indiaman to take us in tow.
I don't suppose the captain would have meddled with that Indiaman if it hadn't been that he thought the owners would be pleased by a prize being sent in so soon. As to the bark, we were obliged to take her to get a new mast. It would never have done to have started on a long cruise with a badly-injured spar."
Colonel Armytage parted with him with a cold shake of the hand and a formal "Good-bye, sir;" and he was in the boat and soon on board the pilot vessel. The Indiaman's yards were swung round, and under all sail she stood to the southward. No sooner had Morton reached the deck of the pilot vessel than, as he stood astern watching the Indiaman, his eye fell far beyond her, in the horizon, on a sail.
The Indiaman being refitted for sea by the united exertions of all the crews, we all sailed out of the harbour in succession, the Phoebe leading. The Mignonne, with her prize crew and some of the prisoners on board, was bound for the Mauritius, to give information of the capture of the island; the emigrant ship was bound for New South Wales, the Indiaman for Calcutta, we for Madagascar.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking