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Its destination was the West Indies, where it was to attack the colonies of Spain, while we were to capture and destroy her fleets on her coasts. This work, however, was not to commence for the present. We having reached the roadstead of Cadiz, found there a Dutch fleet. No sooner was the red-cross seen flying from our mastheads, than the Dutch admiral lowered his flag.
Noble trees shot out in all directions wherever they could find a little earth and a crevice to hold on by, almost meeting overhead in several places, and alive with all kinds of birds and beasts incidental to the climate; parrots of all sorts, great and small, clomb, and hung, and fluttered amongst the branches; and pigeons of numberless varieties; and the glancing woodpecker, with his small hammer like tap, tap, tap; and the West India nightingale, and humming birds of all hues; while cranes, black, white, and grey, frightened from their fishing stations, stalked and peeped about, as awkwardly as a warrant officer in his long skirted coat on a Sunday; while whole flocks of ducks flew across the mastheads and through the rigging; and the dragon like guanas, and lizards of many kinds, disported themselves amongst the branches, not lazily or loathsomely, as we, who have only seen a lizard in our cold climate, are apt to picture, but alert, and quick as lightning, their colours changing with the changing light or the hues of the objects to which they clung, becoming literally in one respect portions of the landscape.
Then suddenly Dave gave a gasp and raised one hand to point. His two classmates turned and were able to make out the mastheads of a craft in the distance. How they strained their eyes! All three stared and stared, until they felt tolerably certain that the craft was headed their way. "They may see us!" cried Hallam eagerly. "Three battleships and as many launches failed to find us," retorted Dan.
By 2.30 P.M. of the day of starting, Rodney's look-outs had sighted the French fleet; and before sundown it could be seen from the mastheads of the main body. At 6 next morning, April 9th, the enemy, both fleet and convoy, was visible from the deck of the Barfleur, the flagship of Hood's division, then in the British van.
The confused voices of men talking amidships mingled with the wash of the sea, ascended between the silent and distended sails-seemed to flow away into the night, further than the horizon, higher than the sky. The stars burned steadily over the inclined mastheads.
As I had anticipated I was here almost clear of the mist; and I eagerly looked ahead to see if all was right in that quarter. The first objects which caught my eye were the mastheads of the brig, broad on our starboard bow instead of directly ahead, as I had expected to find them.
I never was so near a water-spout before: the connection between the column, which was higher than our mastheads, and the water below was no otherwise visible than by the sea being disturbed in a circular space of about six yards in diameter, the centre of which, from the whirling of the water round it, formed a hollow; and from the outer part of the circle the water was thrown up with much force in a spiral direction, and could be traced to the height of fifteen or twenty feet.
I should but weary you to dwell day by day upon the passage of time that Sweers and I passed upon this ship that we had seen upon the ice. We kept an eager look-out for craft, crawling to the mastheads so as to obtain a view over the blocks of ice which lay in masses at the stem and stern of the whaler.
The Americans now had leisure to examine, through their marine-glasses, the vessel which was so boldly following them to the place of battle. She was a man-of-war brig, flying the British ensign from both mastheads and at the peak. Her armament consisted of twelve eighteen-pound carronades and two long sixes, as against the fourteen eighteen-pound carronades and two long nines of the "Enterprise."
Beyond that they will not go, contemning effeminacy. About nine o'clock, when the sun is now well up, the distant sound of a tom-tom is heard, and the first of the returning fleet of muchwas appears at the mouth of the creek. A long line of red and white flags extends from the top of the mainyard to the helm and streamers flutter from the mastheads.
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