"All ready forward there?"
"All ready, sir."
"Then hoist away the lights, and throw a shot across her forefoot I fire!"
Bang went our carronade, but our friend to windward paid no regard to the
private signal; he had shaken a reef out of his topsails, and wars coming
down fast upon us.
It war clear that old Blowhard had at first taken him for one of our own
cruisers, and meant to signalize him, "all regular and shipshape," to use
his own expression. Most of us, however, thought it would have been wiser
to have made sail, and widened our distance, a little, in place of
bothering with old fashioned manoeuvres, which might end in our catching a
tartar; but the skipper had been all his life in line--of--battle ships, or
heavy frigates; and it was a tough job, under, any circumstances, to
persuade him of the propriety of "up--stick--and--away," as we soon felt to
our cost.
The enemy, for such he evidently was, now all at once yawed, and indulged
us with a sight of his teeth; and there he was, fifteen ports of a side on
his maindeck, with the due quantum of carronades on his quarterdeck and
forecastle; whilst his short lower masts, white canvass, and the tremendous
hoist in his topsails, showed him to be a heavy American frigate; and it
was equally certain that he had cleverly hooked us under his lee, within
comfortable range of his long twenty--fours. To convince the most
unbelieving, three jets of flame, amidst wreaths of white smoke, now
glanced from his main--deck; but in this instance, the sound of the cannon
was followed by a sharp crackle and a shower of splinters from the
foreyard.
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