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Updated: June 6, 2025
In the exuberance of my delight I shouted to Mendouca, who was reclining in a hammock aft slung from the main-boom, and, of course, under the shelter of the awning "Hurrah! here comes a breeze at last, although I do not know where it has sprung from, for there is not a cloud to be seen."
All this, however, was but the work of two minutes; and I could not help observing by what trifles lives are lost or saved. Had the axe not been fortunately at the capstan, I should not have been able to cut the jaw-rope, Swinburne would not have had time, and the main-boom would have gone down with the schooner.
Her last cable being cut, she drifted into the hottest part of the action, till her main-boom ran into one of the main-deck ports of a Turkish frigate, the crew of which made several attempts to board her, but were repulsed by Lieutenant Robb and his crew. The Turks after some time sent a large strongly-manned boat to attack the cutter.
There was not the faintest breath of wind to ruffle the mirror-like surface of the long glassy swells as they undulated sluggishly beneath us; and the flap of our canvas, the pattering of the reef-points, the creaking of the main-boom, and the occasional "cheep, cheep" of the rudder upon its pintles, served but to mark and emphasise the deep calm of sleeping Nature.
There is always a certain possibility of bringing a fore-and-aft rigged vessel's main-boom over when she is running hard, and this is apt to result in disaster to her spars. So fast was the Selache traveling that the sea piled up in big white waves beneath her quarter, and, cold as the day was, the sweat of tense effort dripped from Wyllard as he foresaw what he had to do.
I thought of the sea-serpent for one moment, but dismissed the idea the next, as being both too horrible and too unlikely. The creature could hardly have approached without giving Bob the alarm, which I knew he would have instantly communicated to me. At that moment my eyes fell upon the main-boom, and I missed the life- buoy which we kept suspended from it in readiness for any sudden emergency.
The passage, which Captain Glass had called a crevice, twisted into this reef, curved directly to the north heel, and ran along the base of the perpendicular rock. At this point, with the main-boom almost grazing the rock on the port side, Grief, peering down on the starboard side, could see bottom less than two fathoms beneath and shoaling steeply.
Then the Selache slid down the inlet again, and lay for several days in a forest-shrouded arm near the mouth of it, while, when she once more dropped her anchor off a Siwash rancherie far up on the wild West coast, she was painted a dingy grey, and her sawn-off boom just topped her stern. One does not want a great main-boom in the northern seas, and a big mainsail needs men to handle it.
It was no very long job to prepare the schooner for action, and in twenty minutes everything was ready the magazine opened, powder and shot passed up on deck, the guns cast loose and loaded, the pikes cut adrift from the main-boom, arms served out to the crew, and every man at his appointed station.
We clapped on the royals to follow her, when we perceived that the other schooner, which had been in the middle, and whose main-boom we had shot away, had put her helm up, and was crowding all sail before the wind. O'Brien then said, "Must not try for too much, or we shall lose all. Put her about, Peter, we must be content with the one that is left us."
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