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Our prize, however, was in a very crippled condition. She had lost her fore and mizzen-masts by the board, and as it was late in the afternoon before we took possession of her, after which we had to secure the prisoners and send them on board our ship and the Minotaur, it was nearly night before we could begin putting the ship to rights.
Le Foudroyant, with quite one-third of her crew killed and wounded, was running off to leeward, with signals flying for her consorts to rally round her; but, within less than ten minutes after she became visible, her main and mizzen-masts both went.
She had a pair of mizzen-masts, one on the larboard side, one on the starboard, and I was puzzled to know how they were used. "She'll pass close aboard on this next tack," Mr. Cledd replied. "I think we'll be able to see." He had paused to watch her manoeuvres. "Here's the doctor," Blodgett murmured. Black Frank was coming aft with a quick humpy walk. "'Scuse me, sah, 'scuse me!" he said.
For not only had three men been killed outright and eight more or less seriously injured by that terrible lightning-stroke, but our sails were gone, our foremast destroyed, and our rigging so badly injured that our main and mizzen-masts stood practically unsupported; while we had too much reason to fear that the masts and spars themselves were so seriously weakened by the play of the flames upon them as to have become of little or no use to us.
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