Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
She then fired a gun as a signal for us to remain, hove to, and we perceived her boats lowering down. `Now, my lads, said our captain, `if you don't mind a shot or two, I think I will save you from impressment this time. We all declared that we would stand a hundred, rather than be taken on board of a man-of-war. `Very well, says he, `starboard a little, and keep her a little away, so as to let her go through the water; but keep the fore-sheet to windward, so that we may appear only to have fallen off. By this plan we gradually increased our distance from the frigate, and got more on her bow.
The schooner had tacked, and was laying pretty well along-shore, with her head off it, and about a mile distant. One of the pirates, with drunken gravity, had insisted that he was not going to be idle, and that he would tend the fore-sheet.
Ease her!" and whether the puff of wind slackened or the mate lost hold of the wheel, he never has been able to tell, but she righted enough for a moment to let him get on the deck and rush forward to slack up the fore-sheet, bawling meanwhile through the darkness to the mate to keep her head up, as he himself tore and tugged at the rope.
"She files round like a top, and will be off the wind on the other tack presently. Bear a-hand! bear a-hand! It looks black as night to windward." Mulford then regained all his powers. He sprang to the fore-sheet, calling on the others for aid.
I hauled in the weather fore-sheet until it was just in the wake of the mast, and our little barkie was then left to take care of herself whilst we got the trysail bent and set. This done, we filled away again upon our course, with reduced speed, it is true, but very comfortably indeed.
Once satisfied that it was nowhere to be seen, I quickly descended to the deck, trimmed the sheets flowing, and away the little craft bounded over the bright flashing sea. I stood on for an hour exactly, when I once more hauled the fore-sheet to windward, and went aloft with my glass again.
Within the next half-hour the wind had increased so greatly in strength that I began to think there really might be something in Saunders's theory after all, and I was inwardly debating whether I should haul the fore-sheet to windward and heave the schooner to, or whether it would be better to up helm and run before it until the weather should moderate a bit, when a third corposant suddenly appeared, this time on the boom-foresail gaff-end.
The ship lay very broad off, so we thought it better spooning before the sea, than trying or hulling. We reefed the fore-sail and set him, and hauled aft the fore-sheet; the helm was hard a-weather. The ship wore bravely. We belayed the fore down-haul; but the sail was split, and we hauled down the yard, and got the sail into the ship, and unbound all the things clear of it.
"I fear the berth I wish is filled," returned the other, curling his lip: "let draw the fore-sheet, lad; we will take our departure, leaving the fly of the pennant well under our lee. Adieu, brave Captain; when you have need of a thorough rover, and dream of stern-chases and wet sails, think of him who visited your ship at her lazy moorings."
A rope was tied slack under his armpits, and, reaching up at the risk of our lives, we hung him on the fore-sheet cleet. He emitted no sound; he looked as ridiculously lamentable as a doll that had lost half its sawdust, and we started on our perilous journey over the main deck, dragging along with care that pitiful, that limp, that hateful burden.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking