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Updated: May 8, 2025
The sailors ran with grappling-irons to the boat to seek the captain. Euthemio held a purse up as a prize for the rescue of Timar. "A hundred ducats for him who rescues the captain!" "Keep your hundred ducats, good sir!" cried the voice of the man in question from the other end of the ship. "I'm coming." Then they saw him climbing up the stern by the rudder-chains. No fear of his being lost!
This fiction has been kept up during the whole voyage, and on dark nights at the beginning of the seal-fishing it was only with great difficulty that men could be induced to do their spell. No doubt what they heard was either the creaking of the rudder-chains, or the cry of some passing sea-bird.
At any rate, a man was sent forward to the pilot-house, and directly we heard the rudder-chains creaking, and the big iron arms of the rudder, which were on deck, moved over toward the landward side of the vessel, and I knew by that that the captain was putting her head out to sea. Mr. Randall took out the tallow from the lead and laid it in an empty bucket that was lashed to the deck.
The words came to him mingled with other sounds, to wit the creaking of bulkheads, the rattling of cabin doors hooked back to allow the free passage of fresh air, the grinding of a rudder and the clank of rudder-chains, the sonorous hum of the wind through a ship's rigging, the flapping of a sail, the distant subdued murmur of men's voices, and the soft plashing of water.
The wet light of the day's end comes more from the water than the sky, and the waves are colourless through the haze of the rain, all but two or three blind sea-horses swinging out of the mist on the ship's dripping weather side. A lamp is lighted in the wheel-house; so one patch of yellow light falls on the green-painted pistons of the steering gear as they snatch up the rudder-chains.
This gig was the only one of the Speedy's boats that was in the water, at that hour, it having just been lowered to carry the captain ashore. In another minute we had dropped astern, Neb holding on by a boat-hook to one of the rudder-chains. Here we lay, until the gig pulled round, close to us, taking the direction toward the usual landing, with the captain of the Speedy in her.
"But if we can only pick up Muata and his jackal, we should be all right. Just a nice party." The rudder-chains clanked; the boat set up a heavy wash as she turned from her course. There was a splashing, and something snorted almost in Venning's face. "Nearly ran into a hippo!" sang out Mr. Hume. "We must keep out into mid-river; it's too risky inshore. Tell me when you are tired."
Fifty-two of these projectiles were fired from the Chickasaw in the short half-hour of her attack. The exposed rudder-chains were shot away, and at nearly the same time the smoke-stack came down. Admiral Buchanan was wounded by an iron splinter, which broke his leg and otherwise injured it to such an extent that the limb was with difficulty saved.
The Chickasaw fired fifty-two times at her antagonist, shooting away the exposed rudder-chains and the smokestack, while the commander of the ram, Buchanan, was wounded by an iron splinter which broke his leg. Under the hammering, the Tennessee became helpless. She could not be steered, and was unable to bring a gun to bear, while many of the shutters of the ports were jammed.
It is nothing more nor less than sending a poor navigator on a voyage of discovery under the bottom of the vessel, lowering him down over the bows, and with ropes detaining him exactly in his position under the kelson, while he is drawn aft by a hauling line until he makes his appearance at the rudder-chains, generally speaking quite out of breath, not at the rapidity of his motion, but because, when so long under the water, he has expended all the breath in his body, and is induced to take in salt water en lieu.
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