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Vertical shot-proof bulkheads joining the side armor form a box or casemate in the middle of the vessel, in which the 26 casemate-guns, mostly 68-pounder smooth-bores, are situated and fired through port-holes in the ordinary manner. Their speed on trial is about 14 knots, at sea, about 12.
Great castle-like men-of-war rose with all their proud calm dignity out of the water, their dark port-holes opening in the white bands on their sides, and the tricolored flag floating as their ensign. There were thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, and, of these, three were 80-gun ships, and one, towering high above the rest, with her three decks, was L'Orient, of 120 guns.
I thought the poor little fellow would have been lost, but he struck out bravely, which was, as it turned out, the best thing he could have done, as he could swim well. I had just before seen all the port-holes crowded with seamen, trying to escape, and jamming one another so that they could scarcely move one way or the other.
With all her batteries, she is tranquilly lying in harbour, surrounded by English, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Brazilian seventy-fours, moored in the deep-green water, close under the lee of that oblong, castellated mass of rock, Ilha Dos Cobras, which, with its port-holes and lofty flag-staffs, looks like another man-of-war, fast anchored in the way.
You lie down in the broad day, and the summons, "Arise!" attends on every reopening of your eyes. I never went below and saw my fellow-passengers all asleep around me without a sudden feeling that something was wrong: they were drugged, or under some unnatural influence, that they thus slept so fast while the sunshine streamed in through the port-holes.
He said: "It's a yawl." "What I mean is," I said, "can it be moved at all, or is it a fixture here? If it is a fixture," I continued, "tell me so frankly, then we will get some ivy in boxes and train over the port-holes, stick some flowers and an awning on deck, and make the thing look pretty. If, on the other hand, it can be moved " "Moved!" interrupted Captain Goyles.
It tilted forward and downward with a heart-stilling "Ssssooo"; the ladder disappeared; a line of brass-rimmed port-holes flashed past; a jet of steam puffed in Harvey's helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along the rail of the We're Here, and the little schooner staggered and shook in a rush of screw-torn water, as a liner's stern vanished in the fog.
I threw the woman from me, and saw all the heads drop back again in at the port-hole, for the ship had got so much on her larboard side, that the starboard port-holes were as much upright as if the men had tried to get out of the top of a chimney, with nothing for their legs and feet to act upon.
At the port-holes they would place other wooden logs to resemble cannon. The ship should then hang out the English colours, the Jack or the red St George's cross, so that the enemy should deem her "one of our best men of war that goes to fight them." The scheme pleased everyone, but there was yet much anxiety among the pirates.
A stranger would have thought that a county fair, a camp-meeting, or a circus was their goal, but they were on their way to look upon the Court House with its black port-holes, the graystone jail, the tall wooden box, the projecting beam, and that dangling rope which, when the wind moved, swayed gently to and fro. And Hale had forged his plan.
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