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Updated: June 25, 2025
None of the passengers particularly noticed these proceedings, for Dick had been warned by the captain to say nothing about the brig; and as he was the only passenger on deck at the time, no whisper of the privateers had come to the ears of the others. The party were just going down to lunch, on the third day, when a lookout in the maintop hailed the deck: "A sail astern." "How does she bear?"
We had marched to the very outworks of Port Hudson, and engaged the Confederate forces, on that historic night, when lashed to the maintop, high above the boiling surges, stout-hearted, Farragut, drove his vessels through the storm of shot and shell, that was hurled upon him from the heights above, and cut the Rebel communications between Port Hudson and Vicksburg.
It was worth while to hear D'Houdetot tell about the battle of Trafalgar, at which he had been present as a midshipman on board the Algesiras, commanded by his uncle Admiral Magon, how, as he lay on the poop, with both his legs broken by the bursting of a shell, he saw his uncle the admiral receive his death-blow, at the very moment when, wounded already, and his hat and wig carried away by a shot, he had thrown himself on to the nettings, shouting to his crew, "The first man who boards that ship with me shall have the Cross;" and how too, the boarding party having been driven back, the mizzen-mast of the Algesiras, cut through by a round shot, fell across the British ship, throwing a comrade of D'Houdetot's, the midshipman of the maintop, beyond it, into the sea, and how that middy swam back to the Algesiras.
Being come opposite to them, he paused to mop at his red face with a neckerchief of vivid hue, which done, he touched the brim of the glazed hat, and though separated from them by no more than the hedge and ditch, immediately let out another roar for all the world as though he had been hailing the maintop of a Seventy-four in a gale of wind.
"Now then, my lads, clap on, and run it up at once." "Maintop, there," hailed the captain, "be a little smarter, or, by God, I'll call you down for something." This did not come with a good grace from one, who had done nothing, to those who were working with all their energy. "Mr Simple," said the captain, "I wish you would carry on duty with less noise."
But the figure of the daring officer, as he stood thus before his men, waving his sword and calling on them to come on, caught the eye of one of the men in the "Wasp's" maintop; and the next instant a ball crashed into the captain's brain, and he fell heavily to the deck, with his dying eyes turned upwards toward the flag in whose service he had given his life.
The dispute ran high; and I began to think that serious consequences might ensue, for it had continued from the serving of grog at twelve o'clock till near two; when casting my eyes over the larboard quarter, I perceived a sail, and told the captain of it; he instantly hailed the look-out-man at the mast-head; but the look-out-man had been so much interested with what was going on upon deck, that he had come down into the maintop to listen.
The monitor was about five hundred yards from the Hartford, and from the maintop Farragut, looking at her, saw her reel violently from side to side, lurch heavily over, and go down headforemost, her screw revolving wildly in the air as she disappeared. Captain Craven, one of the gentlest and bravest of men, was in the pilot-house with the pilot at the time.
which is quite as appropriate to the Nova Scotia as to the one beyond the North Atlantic. A favourite sail-setting chanty is Solo. Haul on the bowlin', the fore and maintop bowlin' Chorus. Haul on the bowlin', the bowlin' haul! A good pumping-out chanty after a storm is Solo. Old Storm has heard the angel call. Chorus. To my ay! Old Storm along! Reuben Ranzo is a grand one for a good long haul.
I know three or four of her crew who shipped from here, and I will speak to one or two of them, and they will put Bill up to what he ought to do, so that he won't seem like a green-horn when they get to sea. There's the captain of the maintop, Jack Windy, son of an old shipmate of mine, and he will stand Bill's friend, if I ask him.
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