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The captain in the meantime had landed, but returned very shortly with four tall negroes, whom he had engaged to pull the 'midship oars in the whale-boats. They are, I should say, first-rate oarsmen, and have a gentle disposition, ready to obey, and are happy under all circumstances. Besides the negroes, two boats loaded with fresh provisions came alongside.
She was near enough now to be observed with the naked eye with tolerable accuracy, and a shout went up from the men at the pivot gun, in which the rest of the crew on deck joined, as they saw that the shot had struck the midship gun of the enemy, or very near it; and this was the point where old Blumenhoff, the captain of the gun, had been directed to aim.
Both kinds have a double tier of rowers, and both are guided by two steering oars thrust out from the stern; but while the one is still without mast or sail, and is rounded off in exactly the same way both at stem and stern, the other has a mast, placed about midship, a yard hung across it, and a sail close reefed to the yard, while the bow is armed with a long projecting beak, like a ploughshare, which must have been capable of doing terrible damage to a hostile vessel.
The diameter of the screw of the Minx is 4-1/2 feet, so that the area of its disc is 15.9 square feet, and the area of immersed midship section is about 5 times greater than that of the screw's disc.
This he tied so as to make a bag, and contrived to boil it with the few chips of fuel that remained on board. After he had boiled it ten minutes, there was no more fuel, except a bowl or two, and the boat-hook, one pair of oars, and the midship and stern thwarts. He tasted it, and found it glutinous and delicious; he gave Miss Rolleston some, and then fed Welch with the rest.
And, so saying, he stepped to the fore midship window of the pilot-house, laid his finger lightly upon the firing-button that controlled the discharge of the torpedo-shells from the tube in the extremity of the ship's sharp snout, and so placed his eye that he brought the jack-staff forward in a direct line with a very small notch in the window-frame.
Presently she fired her heavy midship gun, the shot from which would have made havoc if it had hit the mark. It was soon evident that the enemy's speed had been overrated, for the Chateaugay gained rapidly upon her. A shot from her heavy gun knocked off the upper works on one side of the Eleuthera, but did no other damage.
Saying which she pointed where she had spread the cloaks hard by the midship thwart and I, amazed by her fierce outburst, suffered her to take the tiller from my hold, and coming amidships laid myself down even as she had commanded.
Now the big second mate hailed from the top of the midship house. "This boat's all open, sir. She won't float a minute!" "Oh, blazes!" howled the skipper, flinging his cap on the deck. "Send a man to swim with the line. Any of them. They're all water rats." "Can't make a man swim here, sir," returned the Hollander, and even now his voice was velvety soft. "Alligators are too thick."
That nearly every plate from midship to stern was torn loose, just as I had seen in my dream and the paper said they could not understand why the ship had not sunk before, as one plate hole was enough to sink the ship. My wife wrote me later and said, "I know why the ship did not sink.
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