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In a few minutes Fort Morgan was ablaze with the flash of her guns, and the leading wooden vessels were sending back broadside after broadside. Farragut stood in the port main-rigging, and as the smoke increased he gradually climbed higher, until he was close by the maintop, where the pilot was stationed for the sake of clearer vision.
And then, abruptly, I caught the sound of a frightened clamour of men's voices, away down somewhere about the maintop curses, cries of fear, even shrieks, and above it all, someone shouting to go down on deck: "Get down! get down! down! down! Blarst " The rest was drowned in a fresh outburst of hoarse crying in the night.
"I'll be glad when this voyage is over." Bob came down, wondering why he was not allowed to stay at the maintop for a while longer. "Oh! Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Tarbill when the boy reached the deck. "You've given me such a fright!" "I didn't mean to," replied Bob honestly enough. "Oh, but you did! I think I'll have to go to my cabin and take some nerve medicine." The passenger left the deck, and Mr.
As soon as it was dark, as if released from a spell, they crawled below, and went into their hammocks: at midnight again the bell struck; again the voice was heard, followed by the shriek; again they repaired on deck: the fourteen remaining bodies lay in a row: another of the murderers was summoned, obeyed, and disappeared: again the flash of lightning burst upon us, and all had vanished: and thus it continued every night, until the boatswain, who was reserved for the last, was dragged overboard after the rest by the corpse of the captain; and then a tremendous voice from the maintop, followed by exulting laughter, cried out, "That job's done."
Another lightning-like flash brought it all around us, and we floated, literally, in a sea of liquid radiance. Not a single square foot of dark water could be seen, in any direction, from the maintop, and all the rigging of the ship, to the royal yards, was lighted up with a faint, unearthly, blue glare.
The lieutenant I spoke of had the watch, and his voice was heard through the roaring of the wind swearing at the men to haul down the staysail, that we might bend on the sheet, and set it right again; when, she having, I said, broached-to, a wave ay, a wave as high as the maintop almost, took the frigate right on her broadside, and the bulwarks of the quarter-deck being, as I said, quite rotten, cut them off clean level with the main chains, sweeping them, and guns, and men, all overboard together.
The whole crew was eager with expectation and the routine work went undone. The ship had been put about several hours earlier, Joe learned, and was due soon to sight the shore unless the reckoning was all at fault. So cleverly had Blackbeard calculated the drift of the boys' raft that a little later in the morning a lookout in the maintop called down: "Land, ho!
In the middle of the night he came across them, and boarding the Prince George, hoisted his flag as admiral of the fleet on the maintop, and took the command.
"And at last the day came," continued Morny, "and we made our attempt, but only to find that we were very closely guarded, and that soldiers were on the look-out in all directions; and in the attempt my father and I became separated, and I should have been taken if it had not been that " "Look here," cried Rodd, springing up, "there's Joe Cross signalling to me from the maintop.
Her ordinary suit of sails consisted of the usual square sails in the foremast, fore topmast staysail and jib, large fore and main topsails, maintop sail, topgallant sail and royal, and on the mizen-mast spanker and gaff topsail.
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