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Drake's little Judith, of only fifty tons, could have given no relief, as she was herself overfull. Hawkins asked all the men who preferred to take their chance on land to get round the foremast and all those who wanted to remain afloat to get round the mizzen. About a hundred chose one course and a hundred the other. The landing took place about a hundred and fifty miles south of the Rio Grande.
"Stand by the lanyard!" cried the first lieutenant on the quarter-deck of the enemy, and he had sighted the piece himself in the absence of any regular gun crew. "Fire!" The cloud of smoke concealed all of the deck forward of the mizzen mast, and Christy could not see what effect had been produced by the charge of grape, or whatever it was.
The decks were deluged with water, which must have swamped the ship had not every hatch been securely battened; the starboard quarter-boat was crushed like an egg-shell, and swept from her davits with the wreck of the bulwarks, which were stove in like a cigar-box; the masts bent like reeds and quivered to the keelson, and the strong mizzen storm-staysails burst with the report of a twelve-pounder.
It was told of her that she would sit knitting in her chair by the mizzen fife-rail while at the break of the poop a miserable man was being trodden and beaten out of the likeness of humanity and never lift her head nor shift her attitude for all his cries and struggles. It was her presence aboard that touched the man-slaughtering Etna with her quality of the macabre.
The exasperating feature of this awful business was that neither Captain Carden nor his aids, who were directing operations from the quarter deck, could discover any corresponding damage on the American ship. Her mizzen topgallant mast had been carried away, but it looked as if all the other shots sent in her direction sped past without harm.
Geoffrey exclaimed, "Master Lirriper's going to London in a ketch a ship with a big mizzen sail, you know and he has offered to take us with him and show us London. And father has said yes, and it's all settled if you have no objection; and of course you haven't." "Going to London, Geoffrey!" Mrs. Vickars exclaimed aghast. "I never heard of such a thing.
At last all were on board, thirty-two souls in all, and at two o'clock a.m. the lifeboat got up sail for home, which lay seven miles off dead to windward. The canvas they set will give some idea of the nature of the struggle a reefed mizzen and two reefs in the storm foresail.
While the men were coming on deck, Bentley leaped into the mizzen rigging and ran up the shrouds with an agility surprising in one of his gigantic figure and advanced age. After a rapid survey he came down swiftly. "It's an English frigate, and not a doubt of it, sir, and rising very fast." "I thought so. Man the weather braces! Up with the helm! Bear a hand now, my hearties!
The Carnatic was commanded by Parker, until the latter got a right to hoist a blue flag at the mizzen; which was done for just one day, to comply with form, when both ship and admiral were laid aside, as too old for further use.
The berg still hangs to the north-west of the ship. We seem to have pivoted outwards from the land. We cannot get out of this too quickly, and although every one has plenty of work, and is cheerful, the uselessness of the ship in her present position palls. "September 5. The mizzen wireless mast came down in a raging blizzard to-day.
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