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Updated: June 23, 2025
"Aloft, topmen! lay out! furl!" cried the First Lieutenant of the Neversink. At the word the men sprang into the rigging, and on all three masts were soon climbing about the yards, in reckless haste, to execute their orders. Now, in furling top-sails or courses, the point of honour, and the hardest work, is in the bunt, or middle of the yard; this post belongs to the first captain of the top.
What the more inspirited Israel to the added step now contemplated, was the circumstance that the ship was not a Frenchman's or other foreigner, but her crew, though enemies, spoke the same language that he did. So very quietly, at last, he goes aloft into the maintop, and sitting down on an old sail there, beside some eight or ten topmen, in an off-handed way asks one for tobacco.
But, at last, the signal was given. "Heave round!" snouted Mr Jellaby from the extreme fore-end of the lower deck, where he had been bustling up the topmen and seeing to the messenger being properly attached to the cable. "Heave round," also cried Sylvester, one of the midshipmen with him.
"Topmen, aloft!" sang out the commodore from the break of the poop, in sharp, piercing accents that rose above the whistle of the wind through the rigging and the dull roar of the sea, which had assumed now a leaden appearance, instead of the bright blue which it boasted the moment before, while its surface began to work into short choppy waves that tossed their crests like horses champing the bit.
"Well done, gallants!" cried Marshall, waving his sword. "Now, ready about, and larboard gunners stand by to repeat the dose. Down helm, steersman, and let her come round! Raise fore tack and sheet! Ha! she is falling off, and means to give us her larboard broadside while we are in stays if she can. Topmen, do your best, now, and pick me off her helmsman before it is too late.
Some of our men, appointed for the purpose, went to the head sails, while others instantly cut the cable. I glanced my eye upwards; the topmen, who had fought their way aloft, had cut loose the topsails with their cutlasses, and they were now being sheeted home; but the fighting was not over, a desperate attempt was being made by the enemy to drive us out of the ship.
But the remembrance of those fair days at sea fills my soul with longing. The weather was mild and bright for the season, and morning upon morning two stout topmen would carry me out to a sheltered spot on the deck, always chosen by my lady herself. There I sat by the hour, swathed in many layers of wool, and tended by her hands alone. Every nook and cranny of our lives were revealed to the other.
"I didn't mean anything." Master Perth turned from his abashed inferior, ascended the main rigging, and with a few sharp orders, compelled the topmen to unsnarl the ropes. He was afraid the midshipman would report what he had said to the captain, and he had attempted to intimidate him into silence by threatening him with a similar fate. "On deck!" hailed Perth from the top.
"Zounds," roared the skipper, "why, topmen why, gentlemen, give way for the honour of the ship Gentlemen, stretch out Men, pull like devils; twenty pounds if you beat him."
The Frenchmen did all that was possible for brave men to do in the circumstances, but their position was hopeless, and after suffering terribly for ten minutes, one after the other hauled down their flag. A tremendous burst of cheering broke from the Furious. She had lost but two men killed and four or five wounded by the bullets of the French topmen.
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