"Lift her, boys! That's the ticket! Pull altogether," and so forth.
My mouth grew so dry that I could not swallow, and I could feel my head roll backward and forward. Presently I began to row with my eyes shut, for it seemed an effort to keep my lids from falling. One of the men in the stern began to spatter us with water to refresh us, for the sun was blistering hot by this time. The Lieutenant stopped his cackling.
The stroke oars were being helped at their work by two men pushing as the rowers pulled. I caught a dim sight of this, and wished that some one could lay hold of my sweep with me, for my forearms pained, and I felt gone in the pit of my stomach. How long we rowed that way I do not know, but suddenly I was awakened, as it were, by hearing Mr. Spencer say:
"Lads, you have held your own. Keep at it!" Then in a lower tone he added, "Get ready with those muskets."
This speech had called me to my senses, and it was almost with a shock of surprise that I found myself keeping up the stroke. My eyes had been closed so long that the light dazzled me, and at first I could see nothing, but I felt better than I had before I closed them. And now to say something that is of interest. A refreshment often comes to a man whose muscles have apparently expended all their strength, and thus it was with me. I was working on my heart and nerves alone, on the very life of me, as it were, and to keep this up too long means ruin; that is its limitation. When my eyes could focus, what little breath I had almost checked.
There was the English barge not three hundred yards astern! A despairing look behind me, and I saw that the shore was yet a half-mile off. The sea was breaking in little rolls of white on every hand, and we were in shoal water that had a peculiar yellowish look. I noticed Mr. Spencer kicking off his boots.
I closed my eyes again, for the sweat stung them, and I felt a blackness coming over me. But just then the crack of a musket sounded in front of me. It was followed by another, and a little action began, for the English boat was answering. I was wide-awake once more now, but in a dream apparently. The marines would stand up and fire, and then squat down and load again. I could hear the English bullets sing past.
"Ouch!" exclaimed the cockswain, all at once, as if he had dropped something on his toe.
A ball had struck him on the fleshy part of the thigh, and he sat there rubbing it and talking in such a comical way that the man on the thwart next to me laughed outright in a hoarse, jarring fashion.