Then they race crashingly inboard with the recoil, and are caught by the breeching tackle. With that the smoky work is all to do over again. The brawny sailor men—from Nantucket, from Martha’s Vineyard, from Sag Harbor, from New London and Barnstable and Salem and Boston and Portsmouth they are—shirtless and shoeless, barefoot and stripped to the belts, ply sponge and rammer. Again each black-throated gun is ready with a stomachful of solid shot.
“Show ‘em your teeth, mates!”
The guns rattle forward on their carriages. The quick port-tires stand ready, blowing their matches. There is a brief pause, as the master-gunner waits for that fatal downward roll to port which offers and opens the Drake’s starboard side almost to the keel.
“Ah! I see, Mr. Starbuck,” begins Captain Paul Jones sweetly, addressing the master-gunner. “Your effort is to hull the enemy.”
“Fire!” cries the master-gunner, for just then the Ranger is reeling down to port, while the Drake is coming up to starboard, and he must not waste the opportunity.
The long nines roar cheerfully, spouting fire and smoke. Then comes that crashing inboard leap, to be caught up short by the tackle. Again the sponges; again the rammers; with the busy shot-handlers working in between. And all the while the little powder monkeys, lads of eleven and twelve, go pattering to and fro, with cartridges from the magazines.
“Why, yes, sir!” responds the master-gunner, now finding time to reply to the comment of Captain Paul Jones; “as you says, we’re trying to hull her, sir.”
Captain Paul Jones makes out three new holes below the Brake’s plankslieer, the hopeful harvest of that last broadside.
“May I ask,” demands Captain Paul Jones, who as a mere first effect of battle never fails of a rippling amiability, “may I ask, Mr. Starbuck, your design in thus aiming below the water-line?”
“Saving you presence, Captain, we designs to sink the bitch.”