“Pitch a shot into her this time, Mr. Matchlock,” ejaculated the skipper, addressing the gunner, “and see if that will bring her out.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said the old fellow, squinting along his piece, and aware that he was one of the best marksmen afloat in any service, “ay, ay, we’ll awake them to a sense of their condition presently; we’ll drive the cold iron through and through the reprobates: too high, a little more starboard—steadily all, and mark the mischief,” cried the old fellow, applying the match. The rest of the sentence was lost in the deafening report of the cannon; a sheet of fire was seen streaming out an instant from the mouth of the piece; and as the pale white smoke sailed slowly eddying away to leeward, the old gunner might have been discerned, bending eagerly forward, and shading his eyes with his hands, as he gazed after the path of the ball.
“By the Lord Harry how it makes the splinters fly!” said the old fellow, as the shot, striking full on the quarter of the chase, went through and through her deck.
“And there goes her flag at last,” said Westbrook, as the ensign of England floated from the quarter of the merchantman, while at the same moment a cloud of smoke puffed from his stern, and a shot, skimming along the deep, toward us, plunged into the waters a cable’s length ahead.
“We’re beginning to make him talk, eh!” chuckled the gunner, waxing warm in his work. “Let him have it again now—ah! that will bring out his teeth—give it to ’em, you old sea-dog,” he continued, familiarly patting his piece, “and by the continental Congress, he’s got it among his sky-scrapers. There come his to’-gallant sails—hurrah!”
The fight now became one of intense interest, for the merchantman perceiving that escape was impossible, seemed determined to resist to the last, and kept up a brisk and well-directed fire upon us from his stern-guns. Their range not being, however, so great as that of our piece, we were enabled after a while to regulate our distance so as to cripple the chase effectually without sustaining any damage ourselves. But it was not long that we were suffered to maintain the combat on our own terms. Worried beyond endurance by the havoc made among his spars, the chase soon put his helm up, wore round, and hauling up his courses in gallant defiance, came down boldly toward us.
“We shall have it now,” whispered Westbrook as he stood by the division where he commanded, “they must outnumber us two to one—but we’ll give them a lesson for all that.”
“Ay! hand to hand, and foot to foot, will be the struggle, and God defend the right.”
No sooner had the chase altered his course, and shown a determination to accept our challenge, than the firing on both sides ceased, and the two ships steadily but silently approached each other.
The eve of a battle is a solemn time. However men may talk in their jovial hours, or feel amid the maddening excitement of the contest itself, there is something inexpressibly awe-inspiring in the consciousness that we are soon to be arrayed in deadly hostility against our fellow-creatures; and now as I gazed along the silent decks, and beheld our brave fellows gazing, as if spell-bound, upon the approaching foe, I perceived that their emotions were akin to my own. Yet there was nothing of fear in those hardy bosoms. There was a compression of the lip, an occasional flashing of the eye, and a half-suppressed word now and then among the men, which showed that amid all their other feelings, a deep, unflinching detestation of their tyrants was uppermost in their hearts. At times their eyes would glance proudly along our sanded deck, with all its apparatus of cutlasses, boarding pikes, and cannon balls, and then turn indignantly, and almost triumphantly, toward the enemy, now bearing down upon us. Meantime a death-like silence hung upon them; not a sound was heard except the sighing of the winds through the hamper, and the dash of the waters under our bows.