“Down with the anchor! out boats, to lay out a warp to spring her! we will fight it out here!’ said old Hulm. But the Englishman had seen us over the land from his mast-heads, and anchored by the stern, clewing up or letting fly everything, and passing out his cable from his stern-port, so as to check her way by degrees; when she came into sight round the point, at not a cable’s length from us, she had a cluster of men on her bowsprit with a hawser. On she came, as if she was going to leap over the town, and dropped her men on the houses, who, sliding down by the dolphin-striker, leaped on shore and made fast with her hawser forward, while her anchor brought her up abaft. And there she lay, as steady as a land battery, and opened her fire. The first broadside, loaded with grape, came rattling among the boats that were laying out the warp; what became of them I never heard; but the warp lay slack, and the current drifted us end-on to the line-of-battle ship’s broadside, and I felt our decks crumbling and splintering under me as her shot tore them up.
“The next thing after that that I recollect, is a great rough hand pulling me out of the water by my collar, and a kindly English voice asking me if I was hurt. The smoke was still lying on the water, and hanging in little clouds upon the trees; but all that was to be seen of the old Najaden, was the main and fore-top gallant and royal masts, which, with their sails set, were still above water, and the blue and yellow pennant over all. We had gone down with our colours flying, and Captain Stuart would not have the pennant struck,—‘we had fought gallantly for it,’ he said, ‘and we should keep it still.’
“Poor old Hulm, he was a fine fellow: there now! that is the very spot of the action,” for by this time they had opened the point of Lyngör, and had come in sight of the beautiful little village. “Do you see that iron pillar on the point? that is Captain Hulm’s monument.”
“He went down with his ship, then?”
“No, he did not; how he was saved I do not remember, but he was saved, and rewarded too for his standing up to the line-of-battle ship; for Father Karl is an old soldier, and knows that a man often deserves as much praise for being beat as for beating. The old fellow lived to a good old age; that was his house, that white fronted one on the hill, for Lyngör was his native place. It is not two years ago that he was capsized in his little schooner and drowned. There’s his monument, any how; and I always salute it, whenever I pass this way:” and as they came abreast of the point, the Gefjon’s swallow-tailed ensign dipped from her peak, and her little pop-guns again testified their respect to the old sailor’s memory.
CHAPTER XVII.
GOTHEBORG.
“A cautious guest,
When he comes to his hostel,
Speaketh but little;