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The San Nicolas, knowing that the Excellent's broadside would send her to old Nick, put her helm up to avoid being raked: in so doing, she fell foul of the San Josef, a Spanish three-decker, and we being all cut to pieces and unmanageable all of us indeed reeling about like drunken men Nelson ordered his helm a-starboard, and in a jiffy there we were, all three hugging each other, running in one another's guns, smashing our chain-plates, and poking our yard-arms through each other's canvas.
All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.
And when the reverberating roll of the fort cannon signalled the hour of departure, anchors were weighed, and sails, loosened from the creaking yard-arms, fluttered and filled to the wind. While the landsmen were still cheering and waving a farewell, Bering and his followers watched the shores slip away, the waters widen, the mountains swim past and back.
The main hatch was clapped down, leaving the mutineers in possession of the deck, till all fell in drunken torpor, when Benyowsky rushed his soldiers up the fore scuttle, snapped handcuffs on the rebels, and tied them to the masts. In the midst of this disorder, such a hurricane broke over the ocean that the tossing yard-arms alternately touched water.
"And every minute their fire grew hotter, and their aim truer down came our mizzen-topgallant-mast, and hung down over our quarter; away went our bowsprit but we held on till we struck their line 'twixt the 'Santissima Trinidado' and the 'Beaucenture, and, as we crossed the Spanisher's wake, so close that our yard-arms grazed her gilded starn, up flashed his Honor's sword, 'Now, lads! cried he, hailing the guns and then why then, afore I'd took my whistle from my lips, the old 'Bully-Sawyer, as had been so patient, so very patient, let fly wi' every starboard gun as it bore, slap into the great Spanisher's towering starn, and, a moment arter, her larboard guns roared and flamed as her broadside smashed into the 'Beaucenture, and 'bout five minutes arterwards we fell aboard o' the 'Fougeux, and there we lay, young sir, and fought it out yard-arm to yard-arm, and muzzle to muzzle, so close that the flame o' their guns blackened and scorched us, and we was obliged to heave buckets o' water, arter every discharge, to put out the fire.
The Jew's brow contracted but he did not move. From his position, he could see the port to the east packed with lifeless vessels. The stretches of stone wharf and the mole were vacant and littered with rubbish. The yard-arms of abandoned freighters were peculiarly beaded with tiny black shapes that moved from time to time.
One after another the studden-sails, which had been extended beyond the yard-arms came flying down like huge white birds from their lofty perches, the moment the halyards and sheets were let go, and, as they bulged out, they looked as if they were about to sail off before the wind ahead of the vessel.
Waked by the uproar, we rushed up from below, and found the poor fellows swinging in the moonlight from the tops and lower yard-arms, like a parcel of pirates gibbeted at sea by a cruiser. Connected with this sort of diversion was another prank of his. During the night some of those on deck would come below to light a pipe, or take a mouthful of beef and biscuit.
I wish that we were well free of them, but how to get away is the difficulty. I suspect that if a Parliamentary ship was to catch the frigate, they'd hang us all up at the yard-arms." "Heaven forbid!" said Lancelot. A few days after this, the look-out from the mast-head shouted "Five sail to the eastward!"
"Her cargo'll have shifted," said the third mate, "and when she got that list her people will have felt frightened and left her." "She's a scary look to her, with her yard-arms spiking every other sea," said Captain Image, "and her decks like the side of a house. I shouldn't care to navigate a craft that preferred to lie down on her beam ends myself."
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