“Call all hands!” roared the Captain. “This keel sha’n’t be beat while I stride it.”
All hands were called, and the hammocks stowed in the nettings for the rest of the night, so that no one could lie between blankets.
Now, in order to explain the means adopted by the Captain to insure us the race, it needs to be said of the Neversink, that, for some years after being launched, she was accounted one of the slowest vessels in the American Navy. But it chanced upon a time, that, being on a cruise in the Mediterranean, she happened to sail out of Port Mahon in what was then supposed to be very bad trim for the sea. Her bows were rooting in the water, and her stern kicking up its heels in the air. But, wonderful to tell, it was soon discovered that in this comical posture she sailed like a shooting-star; she outstripped every vessel on the station. Thenceforward all her Captains, on all cruises, trimmed her by the head; and the Neversink gained the name of a clipper.
To return. All hands being called, they were now made use of by Captain Claret as make-weights, to trim the ship, scientifically, to her most approved bearings. Some were sent forward on the spar-deck, with twenty-four-pound shot in their hands, and were judiciously scattered about here and there, with strict orders not to budge an inch from their stations, for fear of marring the Captain’s plans. Others were distributed along the gun and berth-decks, with similar orders; and, to crown all, several carronade guns were unshipped from their carriages, and swung in their breechings from the beams of the main-deck, so as to impart a sort of vibratory briskness and oscillating buoyancy to the frigate.
And thus we five hundred make-weights stood out that whole night, some of us exposed to a drenching rain, in order that the Neversink might not be beaten. But the comfort and consolation of all make-weights is as dust in the balance in the estimation of the rulers of our man-of-war world.
The long, anxious night at last came to an end, and, with the first peep of day, the look-out on the jib-boom was hailed; but nothing was in sight. At last it was broad day; yet still not a bow was to be seen in our rear, nor a stern in our van.
“Where are they?” cried the Captain.
“Out of sight, astern, to be sure, sir,” said the officer of the deck.
“Out of sight, ahead, to be sure, sir,” muttered Jack Chase, in the top.
Precisely thus stood the question: whether we beat them, or whether they beat us, no mortal can tell to this hour, since we never saw them again; but for one, White-Jacket will lay his two hands on the bow chasers of the Neversink, and take his ship’s oath that we Yankees carried the day.