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Updated: June 7, 2025
However, in one at least, of the great frigate-duels with the English, in which the navy was really baptised, it happened that a round-shot from the enemy entered one of our ports square, and took right down the officer of the gun himself, and almost every man of the gun's crew. Now you may say what you choose about courage, but that is not a nice thing to see.
Late in the afternoon of the fourth day he was called forth, always in imminent peril of his life, and taken round the head of a harbour which was filled with men-of-war, past the Creek Battery, and up into the main town. They halted him at the door of a handsome building, greatly dilapidated by round-shot and shell.
We gave her nothing but round-shot from our gun, and these we gave her with all our hearts. Whenever we noticed the shore, a stand of grape was added. I know nothing of the damage done the enemy. We had the best of it, so far as I could see; and I think, if the weather had not compelled us to haul off, something serious might have been done.
Even as I looked, there came another red flash and another report, that sent the echoes clattering, and one more round-shot whistled through the air. It was the last of the cannonade. I lay for some time, watching the bustle which succeeded the attack. Men were demolishing something with axes on the beach near the stockade; the poor jolly-boat, I afterwards discovered.
As yet the saucy little Gannet, as her crew delighted to call her, had done nothing particularly to boast of, except capturing and burning a few chasse-marees, looking into various holes and corners of the French coast, exchanging shots with small batteries here and there, and keeping the French coastguard in a very lively and active condition, never knowing when they might receive a nine-pound round-shot in the middle of one of their lookout towers, or be otherwise disturbed in their nocturnal slumbers.
The great guns were thundering and roaring, musketry was rattling, round-shot, and chain-shot, and grape, and langridge, and missiles of every description, invented for carrying on the bloody game of war, were hissing through the air, crashing against the sides of the ships, rending them asunder, shattering the tall masts and spars, sending their death-dealing fragments flying around, and hurling to the deck, mangled and bleeding, the gallant seamen as they stood at their quarters in all the pride of manhood, fighting for the honour and glory of their respective countries.
Then all was still for some two hours, when, listening in the pitchy darkness, the watchers heard the footsteps of a great body of men approaching on the ice, which at the time was bare of snow. The garrison were at their posts, and all the cannon on the side towards the lake vomited grape and round-shot in the direction of the sound, which thereafter was heard no more.
Sure enough, between breakfast and noon we caught sight of her topmasts: but to reach her we must pass in full view and almost within point-blank range of a coast battery. We were scarcely abreast of it when a round-shot plumped into the sea ahead of us and brought us to, and almost at once a boatful of soldiers put off to board us.
Job had turned the wheel over to Hawkes, and now, with three picked men to help him, was ramming home a heavy charge of powder in the long "nine." On top of it he drove down the round-shot, then bent above the swivel-breach, swinging it back and forth as he brought the cannon's muzzle to bear on the topsails of the pirate schooner, whose black hull was now plainly visible.
To-morrow the pebbles, which were now rattling down with each retreating wave, might be leaping to the ridge top, and hurled like round-shot far ashore upon the marsh by the force of the advancing wave, fleeing before the wrath of the western hurricane. "God help my boy!" said Mrs. Leigh again. "God is as near him by sea as by land," said good Sir Richard.
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