I had at length fairly aroused the sleeping devil within him.
"Look out there, Lieutenant--look out there,"--and he pointed with his
sinister claw down to leeward. I did so--whew!--what a sight for poor
Master Thomas Cringle! "You are booked for an outside place, Master
Tommy," thought I to myself--for there was the corvette in very truth--she
had just tacked, and was close aboard of us on our lee quarter, within
musket--shot at the farthest, bowling along upon a wind, with the green,
hissing, multitudinous sea surging along her sides, and washing up in foam,
like snow flakes, through the mid--ship ports, far aft on the quarterdeck,
to the glorification of jack, who never minds a wet jacket, so long as he
witnesses the discomfiture of his ally, Peter Pipeclay. The press of
canvass she was carrying laid her over, until her copper sheathing, clear
as glass, and glancing like gold, was seen high above the water, throughout
her whole length, above which rose her glossy jet black bends, surmounted
by a milk--white streak, broken at regular intervals into eleven goodly
ports, from which the British cannon, ugly customers at the best, were
grinning, tompion out, open--mouthed at us; and above all, the clean,
well--stowed white hammocks filled the nettings, from tafferel to cathead
oh! that I had been in one of them, snug on the berth deck! Aloft, a cloud
of white sail swelled to the breeze, till the cloth seemed inclined to say
goodby to the bolt ropes, bending the masts like willow--wands, as if the
devil, determined to beat Paganini himself, was preparing fiddlesticks to
play a spring with, on the cracking and straining weather shrouds and
backstays, and tearing her sharp wedge--like bows out of the bowels of the
long swell, until the cutwater, and ten yards of the keel next to it, were
hove clean out of the sea, into which she would descend again with a
roaring plunge, burying every thing up to the hause--holes, and driving the
brine into mist, over the fore--top, like vapour from a waterfall, through
which, as she rose again, the bright red copper on her bows flashed back
the sunbeams in momentary rainbows.
Pages:
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263