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Ease her! Ease her! Ease her into the big ones, damn you! Don't let her head fall off! Steady! Where in hell did you learn to steer? What cow-farm was you raised on?" Here he bounded for'ard past us with those incredible leaps of his. "It would be good to set the mizzen-topgallant," I heard Captain West mutter in a weak, quavery voice. "Mr. Pathurst, will you please tell Mr.
I had therefore to wait and watch Tom Jerrold swinging away up there and bundling the sail together, the gaskets being presently passed round it and the mizzen-topgallant made snug. When Tom and the others came down, he grinned at me so cordially that I made friends with him again; but I was longing all the time for the blissful moment when I too could go aloft like him.
All this I see in a glance ah! and something more for the mizzen-topgallant had been shot clean through at the cap, and hung dangling. But now, what wi' the quiver o' the guns and the roll o' the vessel, down she come sliding, and sliding, nearer and nearer, till the splintered end brought up ag'in the wreck o' my gun.
I could relate a score or more of such experiences: of ugly collisions with the police in Calcutta, of a narrow escape of being thrown overboard by a dinghy-wallah of the river Hooghley, of a desperate fight in the slings of the mizzen-topgallant yard with an apprentice of my own age, and the like; but the space at my disposal obliges me to conclude.
I was too late to help hand the royal, my especial sail since I had got familiar with my footing aloft; but the mizzen-topgallant sheets, bowlines and halliards having been hardly a second let go, and the men on the poop having only just begun to haul on the clewlines and buntlines, I was quite in time to get out on this yard.
A block, followed by a shower of splinters, came hurtling down on deck, breaking the arm of a man at the aftermost quarter-deck gun on the port side, and then a louder crash aloft caused me to look up just in time to see our mizzen-topmast go sweeping forward into the hollow of the maintopsail, which it split from head to foot, the mizzen-topgallant mast snapping short off at the cap as it swooped down upon the maintopsail yard.
He shook his head, as if irritated by so trivial a happening, walked to the corner of the half-wheelhouse, and stared at the coast he had escaped, white and black and cold in the moonlight. Mr. Mellaire came aft, and they met beside me in the lee of the chart- house. "All hands, Mr. Mellaire," the mate said, "and get the mainsail off of her. After that, the mizzen-topgallant."
An hour later its force had fallen to that of a strong breeze, and the captain had the topsails and mizzen-topgallant set, carrying on still full pitch to the north-east, notwithstanding that just before dawn it became pitch dark again and we couldn't see a cable's length ahead.
Seeing the Constitution approaching, at 4:30 p.m. on the 19th the Guerrier laid her main-topsail to the mast, to enable her the more quickly to close. She then hoisted an English ensign at the peak, another at the mizzen-topgallant mast-head, and the Union Jack at the fore, and at 4:50 opened her starboard broadside at the Constitution.
Pike to set the mizzen-topgallant?" And at that very instant Mr. Pike's voice rang out from the break of the poop: "Mr. Mellaire! the mizzen-topgallant!" Captain West's head drooped until his chin rested on his breast, and so low did he mutter that I leaned to hear. "A very good officer," he said. "An excellent officer. Mr. Pathurst, if you will kindly favour me, I should like to go in.
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