Below this top-hamper the Dover Lass shows on her decks as pretty a set of snarling teeth as any vessel of her size that sails from the shores of merry England—six long demi-culverins throwing nine-pound balls, on each broadside; four minions on her quarter-deck, three falcons as murdering pieces on her forecastle, and half a dozen serpentines mounted as swivels at convenient places on her bulwarks, which are unusually low for a vessel of that day. In this matter of cabins and bulwarks the Dover Lass is rather an anomaly, carrying no high poop nor forecastle, and consequently able to beat to windward with much greater facility than the ordinary ships of the sixteenth century.
Round the butts of her masts in racks are quantities of cutlasses, boarding pikes and battle axes; the arquebuses and pistols being kept by the armorer in the forecastle or in the captain’s cabin.
Her crew, some hundred and twenty-five of as jovial sea dogs as ever cut a throat or scuttled a ship, are out of their hammocks to-night, every man Jack of them; lying in as comfortable places as they can find between the guns on the weather side of the deck and cracking sailor-jokes with each other in a manner unusual to a government cruiser.
Altogether the Dover Lass has the appearance of a man-of-war, though not its absolute discipline; and is evidently one of those vessels fitted out by private individuals to trade if they could, fight if they must, and plunder the “Dons” everywhere and all the time; similar to the ships that, under Drake and Frobisher and old John Hawkins, were a greater terror to the Spaniards than any of the Queen’s vessels themselves.
“This is rather different to a week ago,” mutters the first officer, “when you, Captain Chester, were flaunting it with court beauties at Shene and Windsor.”
“And you were making love to every pretty lass in Harwich,” laughs his superior.
These remarks, though intended to be whispers, are [[8]]really shouted, each man with his mouth at the other’s ear, for the screeching of the wind through the rigging and the smacks of the combing waves as they lash the vessel would almost drown the voice of old Stentor himself.
A moment later the boatswain touches his grisled lock and calls out to the captain: “Hadn’t I better get the second bower clear also?”
“Yes, we may need it with this sea,” assents the captain; while the first officer caustically remarks: “By old Boreas Bill, this is a rip-roarer of a night!”
“Aye, worse on shore than at sea,” answers Guy, bringing his tarpaulin close around him with one hand and with the other trying to keep on his head his sou’ wester, from under which a few Saxon curls blow out in spite of his efforts. All the time the three are stamping savagely on the deck, shaking off the water that comes flying over the rail, and restoring circulations that have been impaired by the searching northwester which has been beating upon them all this awful night.