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That we passed it with great velocity, too, was a circumstance that our eyes showed us too plainly to admit of any mistake. As the ship was still without a rag of sail, borne down by the wind as she had been for hours, and burying to her hawse-holes forward, it was only to a racing tide, or current of some sort, that we could be indebted for our speed.
As if in reply to the sailor's observation, a bright light flashed in the darkness, and a cannon-shot was heard. The vessel was still there and had guns on board. Six seconds elapsed between the flash and the report. Therefore the brig was about a mile and a quarter from the coast. At the same time, the chains were heard rattling through the hawse-holes.
Wilbur and the crew jumped once more to the brakes. "Brake down, heave y'r anchor to the cathead." The anchor-chain, already taut, vibrated and then cranked through the hawse-holes as the hands rose and fell at the brakes. The anchor came home, dripping gray slime. A nor'west wind filled the schooner's sails, a strong ebb tide caught her underfoot.
He actually satisfied even our first lieutenant, who was a rough, hard-working fellow, who had made his way up after having got his promotion from the main-deck, or having, as we used to call it, come in at the hawse-holes. “He was an admirable seaman, heart and soul in his work, and ready to take off his coat and put on a suit of slops and work himself.
There was a little ripple on the water for a few minutes after sundown, but not enough breeze to fill out a sail, and the darkness came on with the brig swinging easily by the creaking cable, which ground and fretted in the hawse-holes. "Now, squire," said the captain, turning to Brace, "how's it going to be?
"I never remember a sound more sickening to the stomach than those chains made as they ran out through the hawse-holes. The one mistake Link committed was in ordering the upper square-sail to be reefed.
A story ran of one, not long before my "date," who, having been sent on two or three bootless errands by unauthorized jesters, finally received from a person in due authority the absurd-sounding, but legitimate, message to have the jackasses put in the hawse-holes. "Oh no," he replied, resentfully, "I have been fooled often enough! That I will not do."
Denham was the commander of the Chloe, which ship, a neat six-and-thirty, was pitching into the heavy seas that now came rolling in heavily from the broad Atlantic, the water streaming from her hawse-holes, as she rose from each plunge, like the spouts of a whale.
The arrival of a ship in that remote and unfrequented part of the world is an event of no little importance; and the rattling of our chain cable through the hawse-holes created a very perceptible sensation in the quiet village.
Going into a port where the water was very deep Rio de Janeiro, I believe the chain cables "got away," as the expression is; control was lost, and shackle after shackle tore out of the hawse-holes, leaping and thumping, rattling and roaring, stirring a lot of dust besides. Indeed, the violent friction of iron against iron in such cases not infrequently generates a stream of sparks.
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