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Updated: June 12, 2025
Then, arming myself with a boarding-pike to serve as a pole, I dropped into the fore-chains and thence stepped on to the ice, and very slowly and carefully walked round the schooner, examining her closely, and boring into the snow upon her side with my pike wherever I suspected a hole or indent. I could find nothing wrong with her in this way, though what a thaw might reveal I could not know.
I pulled up my boat with the others belonging to the ships of the fleet, in obedience to the orders of the officer superintending, close to the fore-chains of the ship. In about half-an-hour afterwards, the prisoners made their appearance on the scaffold, the caps were pulled over their eyes, and the gun fired underneath them.
"Hard a-port now!" cried Pearce, and the vessels came in collision, the spare anchor in the Aspasia's fore-chains catching and tearing away the backstays and lanyards of the enemy's fore-rigging, and, with a violent jerk, bringing down the fore-topmast to windward.
"Aye, aye, sir, I knows what you want," answered Jorrocks, who then proceeded to crawl as carefully towards the fore-chains, as the carpenter had come aft bending down beneath the protection of the weather-bulwarks as he crept along the waist, and holding on by a stray rope's-end here and there to preserve his balance although he did this as much to prevent exposing his body as leverage for the wind to force the vessel over to leeward before the proper time, as to shield himself from its boisterous buffeting.
Wilson seized the lead-line, sprang to the fore-chains, and threw the lead; the rope ran out between his fingers, at the third knot the lead stopped. "Three fathoms," cried Wilson. "Captain," said John, running to Will Halley, "we are on the breakers." Whether or not he saw Halley shrug his shoulders is of very little importance.
Two flashes, smoke, and then the rushing of the shot, followed by the loud and ringing report of the brass guns, and of the reverberation of metal, was heard immediately beneath me. One of the shot had struck the fluke of the anchor in the fore-chains. "There, Mr Farmer," said the captain exultingly, "did you mark that? I knew it I knew it, sir.
The Aspasia ranged up on the weather quarter of her antagonist Pearce, the master, conning her by the captain's directions, so that the fore-chains of the French vessel should be hooked by the spare anchor of the Aspasia.
Finding everything quiet, he ventured into the fore-chains, and thence on deck, accompanied by three of his men. He found Harris, snoring with his back supported against a gun-carriage, and immediately secured him. Then, it only remained to close the forescuttle and the cabin-doors, and to fasten them, to have us all prisoners below.
They then made fast the end of the main-sheet to the ring in her stern-post, and those who were in the fore-chains sent down the end of the boom-tackle, to which they made fast the boat's painter, and by which they lifted her a little out of the water, so that she swam about two or three inches free, but almost full.
For three days we lay almost motionless on the glassy water, sometimes surrounded by large flocks of sea-gulls. The weed brought by the gulf stream, floated around some branches we fished up, were full of beautiful little shells. Once a large school of black-fish came around the vessel, and the carpenter climbed down on the fore-chains, with a harpoon to strike one.
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