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Updated: May 12, 2025
This addition to the amount of canvas spread had an immediately perceptible effect; and going aft to the taffrail, and from thence watching the approach of the boats, Ned believed he should be fairly in the Narrows before the gig reached him. The ship was fully half-way across the outer basin when the gig the leading boat opened fire upon her.
"He, he, he!" cackled Mr Smythe again, while Dick Popplethorne, who had joined me by the taffrail and was intently listening like myself to "Joe's" yarn, burst out in a regular guffaw, which he had to choke his fist into his mouth to suppress; for, any such violent expression of merriment was totally at variance with the discipline of a man-of-war and had to be checked at once for the good of the service!
There was no man to be seen. I stared around for a minute or so; ran to the opposite side and looked over; ran aft and leaned over her taffrail; ran forward and peered over her bows. Her counter was too short to conceal a man, and her stem had absolutely no overhang at all; yet no man was to be seen, nor boat nor sign of a man. I tried the companion: it was covered and padlocked.
Then I realised that I was in that little hell of mine again, now half swamped; and looking back over the gunwale, I saw the schooner standing away from me, with the red-haired captain mocking at me over the taffrail, and turning towards the island saw the launch growing smaller as she approached the beach. Abruptly the cruelty of this desertion became clear to me.
We went past the steersman to the taffrail, and saw the water come foaming under the stern and the bubbles go dancing and vanishing in her wake. I turned and surveyed the unsavoury length of the ship. "Is this an ocean menagerie?" said I. "Looks like it," said Montgomery. "What are these beasts for? Merchandise, curios? Does the captain think he is going to sell them somewhere in the South Seas?"
Yet he fancied he had heard the words "Lost to me" before he withdrew his head. They had been uttered by Mr Smith. Captain Anthony had not moved away from the taffrail. He remained in the very position he took up to watch the other ship go by rolling and swinging all shadowy in the uproar of the following seas.
No sooner had the cutter's bows been turned to the eastwards, than Rover, who had previously been looking very uneasy, standing up with his hind legs on one of the thwarts and his fore-paws on the taffrail astern, gazing anxiously behind at the land they were leaving, all at once gave vent to a loud unearthly howl and sprang overboard.
In the darkness he staggered back from the stinging blow, clutched wildly at the air, slipped and rolled over among the vegetables with the precious rope clasped to his breast. "I got it," he sputtered, "I got it, Gib." "Safe, O!" Mr. Gibney bawled. "Pay out your hawser." They met it at the taffrail as it came up out of the breakers, wet but welcome. "Pass it around the mainmast, Scraggsy," Mr.
He then hurried to the taffrail and shouted for quarter. Jones, being in another part of the ship, did not hear him. The British commander mustered his men to board the American, but they were driven back by the firing from the rigging of the Bonhomme Richard. The condition of the latter could not have been more desperate.
Presently the man came aft, and reported that the captain was waving his hat from the taffrail. "We had better get up the main-topgallant sail, Brown, and run up to her," Bob said. The sail was soon hoisted and, in a quarter of an hour, they were alongside the brig. "That craft sails like a witch," Captain Lockett said, as they came abreast of him. "Yes, sir, she seems very fast."
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