'Yes, and tear my smothered bows out because a crew of dairymen don't know how to steer their ship!'
Then, in the midst of this—crash!—off short like a carrot would snap a yard, or down, torn bodily out by its roots, would fall a gaff, amidst yells of:
'You gutter-sots! You're all drunk this holy day! Suffocate yer, you scabs! Let go yer taws'l halliards! Don't you see they're binding the wessels together by my yard that's gone in the slings?'
But the Mowbray was now on her course; the distance between her and the embracing brigs was fast widening, and articulate oaths had faded into a chorus of indistinguishable shouts. The vessels were doomed. They both drifted ashore abreast of Woolwich, and next day a paper described a fight that was bloody with knives between the two crews, and reported the death of a foolhardy waterman who tried to make peace, clearly with an eye to salvage.
'This,' said Mr. Vanderholt, as the Mowbray, rounding into Galleon's Reach, put the brigs out of sight, 'is a sample of the poetry of the sea, Vi. But very few poets have dealt with subjects of this sort. They write of the splendours of the sunset and moon-rise at sea, and such things. Yet, if I were a poet, I would rather choose a subject in those two brigs in the Thames in a collision, going ashore, full of curses, than in all the stars which shine upon the ocean.'
At five o'clock the Mowbray let go her anchor off Gravesend.