“’Tis perhaps best as it is,” returned Griffith; “but what have you done with those whom we are most bound to protect?”
Barnstable made a significant gesture towards the depths of the vessel, as he answered,—
“On the cables; safe as wood, iron, and water can keep them—though Katherine has had her head up three times to—”
A summons from the Pilot drew Griffith away; and the young officers were compelled to forget their individual feelings, in the pressing duties of their stations.
The ship which the American frigate had now to oppose was a vessel of near her own size and equipage; and when Griffith looked at her again, he perceived that she had made her preparations to assert her equality in manful fight.
Her sails had been gradually reduced to the usual quantity, and, by certain movements on her decks, the lieutenant and his constant attendant, the Pilot, well understood that she only wanted to lessen her distance a few hundred yards to begin the action.
“Now spread everything,” whispered the stranger.
Griffith applied the trumpet to his mouth, and shouted in a voice that was carried even to the enemy, “Let fall—out with your booms—sheet home—hoist away of everything!”
The inspiring cry was answered by a universal bustle; fifty men flew out on the dizzy heights of the different spars, while broad sheets of canvas rose as suddenly along the masts, as if some mighty bird were spreading its wings. The Englishman instantly perceived his mistake, and he answered the artifice by a roar of artillery. Griffith watched the effects of the broadside with an absorbing interest, as the shot whistled above his head; but when he perceived his masts untouched, and the few unimportant ropes only that were cut, he replied to the uproar with a burst of pleasure. A few men were, however, seen clinging with wild frenzy to the cordage, dropping from rope to rope like wounded birds fluttering through a tree, until they fell heavily into the ocean, the sullen ship sweeping by them in cold indifference. At the next instant the spars and masts of their enemy exhibited a display of men similar to their own, when Griffith again placed the trumpet to his mouth, and shouted aloud—
“Give it to them; drive them from their yards, boys, scatter them with your grape—unreeve their rigging!”