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Updated: May 16, 2025
As an evidence of the effect of the fire of the Ranger, the following words may be quoted from Jones's official report: "Her fore and maintopsail yards being cut away and down on the caps, the topgallant yard and mizzen gaff both hanging up and down along the mast, the second ensign which they had hoisted shot away and hanging on the quarter gallery in the water, the jib shot away and hanging in the water, her sails and rigging cut entirely to pieces, her masts and yards all wounded and her hull very much galled."
Her new maintopsail and brand new spencer were blown away like tissue paper; and five sails, furled and fast under double gaskets, were blown loose and stripped from the yards. And before morning the Mary Rogers was hove down twice again, and holes were knocked in her bulwarks to ease her decks from the weight of ocean that pressed her down.
I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail. "Yes. He was afraid of it being lost in the setting." "I assure you he never gave the order. He may think he did, but he never gave it. He stood there with me on the break of the poop after the maintopsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope- -positively whimpered about it and nothing else and the night coming on!
"Mainsail haul!" and the ponderous mainyard was swung round, bringing with it the maintopsail and topgallant yards with all their acreage of canvas: the foreyards followed suit, when the captain shouted, "Haul of all;" and, after the final order, "Brace sharp!" the Nancy Bell might have been seen heading a sou'-south-east course in lieu of her former direction to the westwards, and gaining more southing by the change.
We drove too far south, and for a week every afternoon we hove-to under a close-reefed maintopsail for fear of the ice throughout the long hours of Antarctic blackness. We were in no temper to think of ghosts, and yet though no one had delivered the news authoritatively, it had come by this wild bleak time to be known that Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand were engaged. Mrs.
Descending to the deck, he ordered a boat to be cleared away, and, running as near as he dared to the wreck, he backed his maintopsail and took a long and earnest survey with his glass. All hands were watching with anxious eyes the expression on the captain's face. He handed his glass to the mate, who carefully examined every fragment which appeared above water.
There is a good deal of what I call a lubber's fuss, parson, kept up on board a ship that shall be nameless, but which bears, about three leagues distant, broad off in the ocean, and which is lying to under a close-reefed maintopsail, a foretopmast-staysail, and foresail I call my hand a true one in mixing a can take another pull at the halyards!
At last he saw a pin-point of light far away, and around it and above it blacker darkness, which was faintly shaped to the outline of a ship and canvas hove to in the trough, with maintopsail aback, as he knew by its foreshortening. And even as he looked and shouted it faded away. He screamed and cursed, for he wanted to live. He had survived that terrible fall, and it was his right.
Seldom climbed to the top of the after-house, looked to windward, then to leeward at the rolling steamer, and called out: "I want more beef at the wheel. Bigpig, take it; and you, Turkey, stand by with him. Get away from there, Sinful. Give her the upper maintopsail, the rest of you. Poop-deck, you stand by the signal-halyards. Ask him if he's got a tow-line ready."
Our ensign was thereupon raised and lowered from the peak three times in succession, according to the usual nautical etiquette observed on such occasions, the other ship returning the compliment in like fashion; and we were just passing each other, she crossing our bows and sailing away right before the wind on our starboard beam, when, all of a sudden, she brought up, backing her maintopsail and firing a gun at the same time to attract our attention.
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