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Updated: June 21, 2025
Behind a boat rowed against the current two widening lines of wavelets, in the shape of an elongated V, stretch apart and glitter, and every dip of the oars and the slippery oar-blades themselves, as they rise out of the water, reflect the sunshine. The boat appears but to touch the surface, instead of sinking into it, for the water is transparent, and the eye can see underneath the keel.
Just at this moment the sun's upper limb flashed into view over the edge of the cloud-bank, darting a long gleam of golden radiance athwart the heaving welter to the schooner, and I looked again, half expecting to catch the answering flash of wet oar-blades; but there was nothing of the kind to be seen.
He saw the Carmelite pronouncing the absolution, and he witnessed the approach of the larger boat. He heard a plunge heavier than that of falling oars, and he saw the gondola of Antonio towing away empty. The crew of the Republic had scarcely swept the Lagunes with their oar-blades before his own stirred the water. "Jacopo! Jacopo!" came fearfully and faintly to his ears.
A round fiery light shot beyond the martingale, and the smoke rolled along the sea, outstripped by a crowd of missiles that were hissing across the water. A shout, in which command was mingled with shrieks, followed, and then oar-blades were heard dashing the water aside, regardless of concealment. The ocean lighted, and three or four boat-guns returned the fatal discharge from the ship.
Then were observed rapid movements on the decks; and men were seen hastening aloft, and standing out upon the foremast yards. This, however, had offered no interruption to the exertions of the boatmen, who still kept plying with a vigour that set even the sail-less vessel in motion, as the foaming water, thrown from their bending oar-blades, dashed angrily against her prow.
The heavy oar-blades of the seamen now made play, dashing the lake away in sheets of foam; and, in less than five minutes, the heads of the swimming savages were seen mingling like so many rats upon the water, as they returned once more in disappointment from their fruitless pursuit.
Captain Hankey, who had been pitching shot and shell into them from the moment of our casting off from the Mermaid, some of the missiles describing beautiful curves over our heads as we pulled in, now ceased firing, for fear of hitting us as well as the foe; and so, the Arabs were able to concentrate all their energies towards resisting us, the batilla sending some round shot in our direction from an old brass carronade she had mounted on her high forecastle, one of which, skipping along the water as if it were playing ducks and drakes, shaved off three of our oar-blades on the starboard side.
The canoes can move much faster than the tiger, and one shoots quickly past him, and the men in the bow push his head under water with their oar-blades. Before the tiger has risen again the canoe is out of reach. The tiger snorts and growls and puffs madly, but in a moment another canoe is upon him and another oar thrusts him down deeper than before.
The bow oarsman bore the boat off from the ship's side, the oar-blades flashed into the water, and a minute later Captain Popovski was standing on the deck of the Flying Fish, exchanging the most elaborate and ceremonious of bows with von Schalckenberg and Lethbridge, as his small deep-set eyes flashed fore and aft in inquisitive scrutiny of the few visible details of the extraordinary ship on board which he found himself.
On she swept, silently as a dream; not a word was uttered on board her; there was no warning roll and rattle of the oars in the rowlocks to apprise the sleeping crew of the approach of danger; there was not even the plashing sound of the oar-blades dipping into the water, they rose and fell silently as the misty oars of a phantom boat; and when at length she swept up alongside the Aurora, a sign was all that was needed to convey the orders of the officer in charge to his crew: his right hand was gently raised, the oars were noiselessly lifted from the rowlocks and laid in without a sound upon the padded thwarts, the boat sheered alongside, without absolutely touching, the painter was made fast to the Aurora's fore-chains, and sixteen armed figures climbed noiselessly as ghosts over the bulwarks, leaving two in charge of the boat.
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