"Ned, those men don't mean to leave."
"Don't mean to leave!"
"No; they know if that vessel is left to steer herself, ten to one if she strikes an English ship. They're going to sacrifice themselves."
Right ahead of the infernal, as near as they could swing at their anchors, lay an eighty-gun ship and a sixty-four. It was evidently the intention of these desperate men to lay her between them, apply the match, and blow both themselves and their enemies into eternity together. It seemed most probable that they would accomplish their purpose; the breeze was light, and scarcely felt by the men-of-war, whose crews had cut the cables and made sail, while the infernal, by reason of momentum previously acquired, was coming down fast, bearing destruction and death.
Now ensued an uproar impossible to describe. Blazing cinders and sparks from the fire-ship blew on to the main-topsail of the eighty, which was instantly in flames; but with that cool courage and perfect discipline so characteristic of British seamen, the topmen cut the sail from the yard, and passed water in buckets; the boats' crews were towing the ship ahead, while at the same time a hot fire was kept up upon the fire-ship from every gun that could be brought to bear; the other ships, that were out of her path, also poured in whole broadsides, in the hope of either blowing up or sinking her before she should get near enough to do execution.
"That ship is gone for't," said Ned, as the helmsman of the infernal, seeing the two ships were separating, and that he could hope to destroy but one, altered his course, and steered direct for the eighty. At this moment a well-directed broadside cut off the foremast of the fire-ship, that, with all the head sails, went over the side. This brought the vessel to the wind, and arrested her progress, the man-o'-war improving the fortunate moment to escape.
The scene now grew appalling. The air was filled with the roar of hundreds of cannon, while, as the now unmanageable vessel came head to wind, the flames ran up the rigging of the mainmast and swept over the place where those self-devoted men stood.
In the midst of this horrid din, a shell exploded on her deck, a flash of blue flame illumined with its ghastly light the whole horizon, followed by an explosion that made every vessel quiver as though racked by the throes of an earthquake. The blazing mast shot up to the sky like a rocket, followed by jets of water and torrents of flame, bearing before them countless missiles, legs, arms, and other portions of the dismembered bodies of that ill-fated crew, to which succeeded a darkness made more intense by clouds of smoke, and a stillness as of death.
As the smoke gradually lifted and drifted away to leeward before the wind, the eyes of all in the fleet were naturally directed to the scene of the explosion and the spot from which the infernal had disappeared, when they beheld what they supposed to be the Arthur Brown coming rapidly down before the wind, her snow-white canvas conspicuous against the frowning sky. Instantly concluding that the shrewd Yankees had improved this moment of confusion and alarm to escape, "The brigantine! The brigantine!" rang out from many a boat's crew; and the water was white with the foam of oars, as from all directions they dashed upon their prey.
The boys, excited by the roar of artillery, the smell of gunpowder, and the examples of daring they had witnessed, were now perfectly reckless.