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Updated: June 28, 2025
The crew had already breakfasted. Tyke had been carefully helped up by Drew and Captain Hamilton and placed in a chair abaft the mizzenmast, where his keen old eyes could delight themselves with the activities of the crew. Ruth had fussed around him prettily with cushions and a rest for his injured leg, until the veteran vowed that he would surely be spoiled before the voyage was over.
But in a little I saw that these twining branches were verily a mass of ropes and cordage, a twisted tangle that hung above me yet crushed me not by reason of a squat column that rose nearby, and staring on this column I presently knew it for the shattered stump of the mizzenmast.
Seventeen were drowned, and there they were, most of them, and the body of the captain lashed to the head of the mizzenmast, so as to look as if he were leaning over it, his head stiff upright and his eyes watching us, and the stir of the seas made him appear to be struggling to get to us.
There is no time to waste, however, and so he finishes the battle in his laughable plight. An officer, pointing to the captain, cries, "Hull her, boys! hull her!" The men, catching the play upon words, shout, "Hull her! Yes, we'll hull her!" "Old Ironsides" now lets fly a terrible broadside at close range. The Guerrière's mizzenmast goes overboard.
"You may `hulloo' as long as you like, mounseers, but we'll be giving you as good before long," cried Ben; several of his shipmates echoing his words. They were right, for scarcely had the Frenchmen's cheers ceased, than down also fell their mizzenmast with a tremendous crash, evidently doing much damage.
Be did not sense what was impending all about him. Aft, where he stood, the deck was almost deserted. Amidships and for'ard, gamming with the boat's crew, the deck was crowded with blacks of both sexes. He made his way to the yam sacks lashed abaft the mizzenmast and got his bottle. Just before he drank, with a shred of caution, he cast a glance behind him.
Even the wary Pilot lost sight of their other foes, in the high daring of that moment, and smiles of stern pleasure were exchanged between him and Griffith as both comprehended, at a glance, their advantages. "Lash his bowsprit to our mizzenmast," shouted the lieutenant, "and we will sweep his decks as he lies!"
"Handles like a yacht," muttered Seldom, as, with brow wrinkled and keen eye flashing above his hooked nose, he conned the steering from his place near the mizzenmast. Three men separated themselves from the rest and came aft. They were those who had walked the forward deck.
Now we saw many junks and small native craft, which we viewed with uncomfortable suspicion, for though our cannon were double-charged and though loaded muskets were stacked around the mizzenmast, we were very, very few to stand off an attack by those yellow demons who swarmed the Eastern seas in the time of my boyhood and who, for all I know, swarm them still.
The fifth shot struck the mizzenmast about four feet above deck, and cut it almost away. "Victory is ours!" cried Fernando, waving his sword in the air. "Hurrah for ould Ireland and the United States foriver!" shouted Terrence, leaping on the embankment, and dancing a jig. But the Xenophon had not given up the contest yet.
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