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As I lay there I heerd our lads a cheering above the roar and din, and presently, the smoke lifting a bit, I see the Spanisher had struck, but I likewise see as the poor old 'Bully-Sawyer' were done for; she lay a wreck black wi' smoke, blistered wi' fire, her decks foul wi' blood, her fore and mainmasts beat overboard, and only the mizzen standing.
The two largest ships were carried out of the harbour, where their mainmasts were cut away, while the cables of the smaller vessels were chopped through, so that they might drift wherever the tide might carry them. These precautions were not unnecessary. Drake at once made chase after the rich prize he had heard of, but there was still the risk of his being overtaken.
Then he pointed to the men. Down they went under hatches rats in a trap! "Tramp bundle pack!" says he, as the last man bobbed below. But with a ping that raised the hair from my head, came a pistol-shot from the mainmasts. There, perched astride of the crosstrees, was a rascal mutineer popping at M. Radisson bold as you please.
At twenty minutes past six the fore and mainmasts of the Guerrière went over the side, leaving her an unmanageable wreck. The Constitution ceased firing and shot a-head, her cabin having taken fire from the Guerrière's guns.
The long rows of cabins on the upper deck were torn down; and a heavy eight-inch shell-gun, mounted on a pivot between the fore and mainmasts, and the grinning muzzles of four twenty-four-pounder howitzers peeping from the ports, told of her warlike character. The great levee of the Crescent City was crowded with people that day.
At 12h. 40m. sent Lieutenant Collis in the pinnace to assist the Hannibal; at 1h. 40m. finding it impossible to near the enemy's ships with safety, it being calm, and a strong current setting in-shore, their batteries firing red-hot shot and throwing shells, ceased the action as per signal, as did the other ships, and steered for Gibraltar, observed the Hannibal ceased firing, and hoist the colours reversed, having her fore and mainmasts shot away, and being in ten foot water, rendered all assistance useless.
Still the "Franklin" pressed on. Crash! a huge shell from an Armstrong eighteen-ton gun burst between the fore and mainmasts; the bow pivot-gun was dismounted; ten men of her crew down; the maintopmast stays cut, and the maintopmast tottering. Crash! Another shell, and the jib-boom hangs dragging under the bows; the fore topgallantmast is carried away.
It had two masts similar to the fore and mainmasts of a brig or ship, and, close abaft the mainmast, a topsail mast. After burying an officer and two seamen at Batavia, Hunter left that place on October 20th, reached the Cape on the 17th of December, and was driven to sea again after the loss of two anchors, till the 30th.
While the captains were at dinner on the quarter-deck, however, the frigate blew up, and about 200 men, including five captains, were lost. "I was eating my dinner with the rest," writes the surgeon, Richard Browne, "when the mainmasts blew out, and fell upon Captains Aylett, Bigford, and others, and knocked them on the head; I saved myself by getting astride the mizzenmast."
It was light enough by this time, what with the increasing daylight and the clearing away of the fog, for us to see that she mounted four guns probably six-pounders of a side, and there was something very like a long nine-pounder covered over by a tarpaulin, between her fore and mainmasts. She was well to windward of us, and presently crossed our bows at a distance of about a mile.
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