“Secure the guns—be smart, my lads, you work for your lives. We must put the mainsail on her, Mr Pearce, and draw off if we can.”
The master shook his head. “Hands by the clue-garnets and buntlines—man the mainsheet—let go those leech-lines, youngster—haul aboard.”
“It’s a pity, too, by God,” said the captain, looking over the hammock-rails at the French vessel, which was now running before the wind right on to the shore.—“Eight or nine hundred poor devils will be called to their last account in the course of a few minutes. I wish we could save them.”
“You should have thought of that before, sir,” said the master, with a grave smile at this reaction of feeling on the part of the captain. “Nothing can save them, and I am afraid that nothing but a slant of wind or a miracle can help ourselves.”
“She has struck, sir, and is over on her broadside,” said the quarter-master, who was standing on the carronade slide.
“Mind your conn, sir; keep your eyes on the weather-leech of the sail, and not upon that ship,” answered the captain, with asperity.
In the meantime, the mainsail had been set by the first-lieutenant, and the crew, unoccupied, had their eyes directed for a little while upon the French vessel, which lay on her beam-ends, enveloped in spray; but they also perceived what, during the occupation and anxiety of action, they had not had leisure to attend to, namely, the desperate situation of their own ship. The promontory was now broad on the weather bow, and a reef of rocks, partly above water, extended from it to leeward of the frigate. Such was the anxiety of the ship’s company for their own safety, that the eyes of the men were turned away from the stranded vessel, and fixed upon the rocks. The frigate did all that a gallant vessel could do, rising from the trough of the sea, and shaking the water from her, as she was occasionally buried forecastle under, from the great pressure of the sail, cleaving the huge masses of the element with her sharp stem, and trembling fore and aft with the violence of her own exertions. But the mountainous waves took her with irresistible force from her chesstree, retarding her velocity, and forcing her each moment nearer to the reef.
“Wear ship, Mr Hardy,” said the captain, who had not spoken one word since he rebuked the quarter-master—“we have but just room.”
The master directed the man at the wheel to put helm up, in a firm but subdued tone, for he was at that moment thinking of his wife and children. The ship had just paid off and gathered fresh way, when she struck upon a sunken rock. A loud and piercing cry from the ship’s company was followed by an enormous sea striking the frigate on the counter, at once heeling her over and forcing her ahead, so that she slipped off from the rock again into deep water.
“She’s off again, sir,” said the master.