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Updated: June 18, 2025
"Captain Scott will arrange the affair all right. If I were a sporting-man, I would bet on him yet," protested Felix. "But while we are not scared, you know that it is possible for one of those guns to put a shot through our boiler, rip out the engine, or tear a big hole in the plates of the Maud," added Louis. "We can plug the shot-holes I believe that is what they call it."
By plugging the shot-holes and setting strong gangs to work the pumps, the prize was kept afloat sufficiently long to get out some of the provisions and water, as well as a portion of her cargo.
The hull of the Peacock was so riddled that she sank, while every exertion was made by her captors to save her by throwing over her guns and stopping the shot-holes. Nine of her crew went down with her, and three of the Hornet's men. Captain Peake was found dead on board.
The next moment the fugitive physician fell over a flowerpot, and came down on all fours, staring like a cow. The hat with the two shot-holes in it rolled upon the gravel path before him, and Innocent Smith came round the corner like a railway train.
The order was obeyed, and all the day was spent in plugging shot-holes, and in bending new sails or mending rent ones, and in reeving fresh running rigging. Captain Penrose, with an excusable feeling, could not bring himself to reveal the condition of the old Terrible to the Admiral.
We saw men and stages over the sides of the French ships stopping shot-holes, and we heard that one of them had sunk in harbour. I was in hopes that we should go back to Sheerness to refit, and that I might thus have an opportunity of getting home. I had done my duty during the action, so had every one else. The wind freshening during the night, the hands were ordered up aloft to shorten sail.
He was attended by his mates, who were provided with shot-plugs, oakum, and tallow, to stop any shot-holes which might be made. The surgeon was in the cockpit with his assistants. The knives, saws, tourniquets, sponges, basins, wine and water, were all displayed and ready for the first unlucky patient that might be presented. This was more awful to me than anything I had seen.
Her bottom was turned in our direction, and the men were busily engaged in stripping off a quantity of her sheathing and removing several of her planks below the water- line, which, in conjunction with the fact that we detected what looked uncommonly like a couple of shot-holes through her bottom, led us to believe that she, like ourselves, had recently had a very narrow escape of being sunk.
While we were employed in watering our bark, the men on board the St George were busied in refitting that ship as well as they could; the carpenter stopping up the shot-holes in the powder-room with tallow and charcoal, not daring, as he said, to drive a nail, for fear of making it worse.
Pedro de Valdez was universally loved and honoured, and his desertion in the face of an enemy so inferior in numbers was regarded as scandalous poltroonery. Monday morning broke heavily. The wind was gone, but there was still a considerable swell. The English were hull down behind. The day was spent in repairing damages and nailing lead over the shot-holes.
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