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Not so bad as it might ha' been." "Oh, it couldn't have been worse!" I cried. "What? Not been worse, sir? Why, where's your mainmas' gone by the board, and your fore-mast cut off at the top-mast-head, and your mizzen splintered into matchwood? Why, my lad, this arn't been nothing. And look yonder, there's the sun a-coming out, leastwise it's making the clouds look red-like.

Thus reinforced, we had the main-top-mast fidded in a very few minutes. Neb was then directed to set up the rigging, and to clear away the yard, so it might be got into its place. In a word, an hour passed in active exertions, at the end of which, we had everything rove, bent, and in its place, on the main-mast, from the top-mast-head to the deck.

By the time we had got up our anchor and the boat was stowed, the ship was within a league of us, and, as we thought, bore down to engage us; so we spread our black flag, or ancient, on the poop, and the bloody flag at the top-mast-head, and having made a clear ship, we stretched away to the westward, to get the wind of him.

We had from the top-mast-head taken a view of the sea around us, and observed the whole, to the west, to be strewed with small islets, sand-banks, and breakers, to the utmost extent of our horizon. They seemed indeed not to be all connected, and to be divided by winding channels.

General Oglethorpe, who was at Simons's fort, fired at them as they passed the sound, which the Spaniards returned from their ships, and proceeded up the river Alatamaha, out of the reach of his guns. There the enemy having hoisted a red flag at the mizen top-mast-head of the largest ship, landed their forces upon the island, and erected a battery, with twenty eighteen pounders mounted on it.

It was George Ballmer, a young English sailor, who was prized by the officers as an active lad and willing seaman, and by the crew as a lively, hearty fellow, and a good shipmate. He was going aloft to fit a strap round the main top-mast-head, for ringtail halyards, and had the strap and block, a coil of halyards and a marline-spike about his neck.