Embassador

“ Hardly had I noted this when a cry of terror escaped from the lips of the whole crew. A terrific wind, accompanied by a quick succession of mountainous waves, had carried away at one sweep the jib-boom, fore-top-mast, gallant-mast, and royal-mast, leaving them still clinging to the ship by the stays, so impeding her progress that she rolled in the deep troughs of the sea as if every moment she would plunge in to rise no more. ”

“ A day with the fleet in port passed casually and calmly enough. There was none of that melodrama which invests the war of the destroyer and the submarine, and human problems seemed to lack importance, for in the fleet man is somewhat shadowed by the immense force he has created. On board there were various drills, perhaps a general quarters practice drill that sends everybody scurrying to his station. Hour after hour, the visitor sees the continuous and multitudinous activity needed to keep a dreadnaught in shape as a fortress, an engine, and a ship. ”

“ Bias pointed to the poop, where the commander Eumedes was standing directing the course of the fleet.
As if moulded in bronze, a man thoroughly equal to his office, he seemed, in spite of the shouts, greetings, and acclamations thundering around him, to close his eyes and ears to the vessels thronging about his ship and devote himself body and soul to the fulfilment of his duty. ”

“ They adopt every improvement in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they fundamentally believe that the best stratagem in naval war, is to lay your ship close alongside of the enemy's ship, and bring all your guns to bear on him, until you or he go to the bottom. ”

“ As the report boomed over the water, a gun from the ship of the Admiral, Lord Effingham, rendered it a response, and a signal was hoisted for the fleet to close. Before the order could be well obeyed, a mass of tall masts, extending over an area of seven miles, and looking like a forest in the distance, appeared on the horizon, and announced the approach of the long-expected enemy. ”

“ The rest is merely a narrative of collisions between ship and ship, with masts and sails falling, chains and grapnels straining, the hurling of stones and iron bars from the castle at the masthead, the felling of one another’s masts, the cutting adrift of the enemy’s halyards and shrouds, the heaving overboard (a favourite and regular habit in war) of every man and boy of the enemy they could lay their hands on, and finally victory to the English. ”

“ The captain uttered a quick word of command. The wheel spun, the roaring, trembling ship turned in the dark. A strange thing happened. Just as the destroyer had cleared the danger line, the torpedo, as if actuated by some malevolent intelligence, porpoised, and actually turned again towards the vessel. The fate of the destroyer lay on the knees of the gods. Those on the bridge instinctively braced themselves for the shock. ”

“ If I might venture, without seeming irreverence, to modernise and so to illustrate this command of our Lord's, I would say, that He here bids us do for our life's voyage across a stormy sea, exactly what the 'Bessemer' ship was an attempt to do in its region—so to poise and control the oscillations of the central soul that however the outward life may be buffeted about, there may be moveless rest within. ”

“ Throughout the whole of these trying moments, indeed, the discipline of the ship appears to have been maintained, not only without the smallest trace of insubordination, but with a degree of cheerfulness which is described as truly wonderful. Even when the masts fell, the sound of the crashing spars was drowned in the animating huzzas of the undaunted crew, though they were then clinging to the weather gunwale, with the sea, from time to time, making a clean breach over them, and when they were expecting every instant to be carried to the bottom! ”

“ If we do, it will be with sincere pity that we shall watch the proud vessel sink to the bottom, and we shall understand the grief of those whom once it bore over ebb and flow, and who believe they owe every thing to it. We shall rejoice doubly, too, to think that we ourselves have a safe bark with stout planks and strong masts, and a trustworthy pilot at the helm ”

“ There is defiance in the remaining stumps of her masts, raised up like maimed limbs against the menacing scowl of a stormy sky; there is high courage in the upward sweep of her lines towards the bow; and as soon as, on a hastily-rigged spar, a strip of canvas is shown to the wind to keep her head to sea, she faces the waves again with an unsubdued courage. ”

“ Mr Bascomb, you see that dark object just opening out over the southernmost end of Tierra Bomba? Well, that is the shore battery, and as it possesses certain small ordnance, such as falconets and swivels, which we could not spare the time to destroy, I would recommend that, as we must pass it close, the men be instructed to lie down behind the bulwarks as we sail by, lest haply any of them be hit; for I make no doubt that they will discharge at us every piece they have as we pass. ”

“ Now there is this to be said of such submersive battlings in a sea of work: while the fierce toil of the buffeting may be good for the swimmer's soul, it necessarily narrows his horizon, inasmuch as a man with his head in the sea-smother lacks the view-point of the captain who fights his ship from the conning tower. ”

“ And add a bubble to the clipper's track.
He had signed his name, there was no turning back,
No pardon for default-this must be done.
One iron rule at sea binds everyone.
Till now he had been treated with contempt
As neither man nor thing, a creature borne
On the ship's articles, but left exempt
From all the seamen's life except their scorn.
But he would rank as seaman off the Horn,
Work as a seaman, and be kept or cast
By standards set for men before the mast. ”

“ In case any ship shall be distressed or disabled by loss of masts, shot under water, or otherwise so as she is in danger of sinking or taking, he or they are to give a signal thereof so as, the fleet having knowledge, they may be ready to be relieved. ”

“ Its worst motion is an unearthly twist,—a swift appalling rise at a dreadful angle, a toss across space to the other side of a wave, a fearful descent sideways and down and a ghastly shudder. "You need an iron stomach" to be on a destroyer is a navy saying. ”

“ Half the oars snapped, of course, so we were utterly helpless. Nearly every standing man was hurled flat or flung overboard or from his platform to the deck or into the waist. We were in the utmost confusion. Anyhow, as against undisciplined irregulars, we had no boarding netting out, being all for the attack and defense unthought of.
"And as we struck the whole ten thousand savages stood up and yelled."
"Stood up!" the Emperor interjected. "Stood up?"
"Yes, Sir," Bassus went on. "Stood up, not a man of them over knee deep and many not ankle deep!" ”

“ She’ll not do that, Master Bascomb; she be a bigger ship nor we. Besides, how’s she to know we baint a Spaniard like herself, if we don’t tell her. We’ll clear the decks and make all ready before we show our flag, gentles ”

“ I’ve often read stories of where a steamer lost a propeller or something, and the sailors rigged up a mast and got home all right.”
“They rigged up a jury mast—I’ve read about that, too,” said another. “Why can’t we do that here, and blow home?”
“Yes, why can’t we?” asked others. “Let’s send a delegation to the captain and ask him!” ”

“ If an ordinary merchant ship rolls forty degrees her crew think that the end has come and they will be wrecked; forty degrees is ordinary for a destroyer to roll in the sea. Often moving about the Colodia was almost like climbing a sheer wall. ”

“ If the admiral would have any of the ships to make sail or endeavour by tacking or otherwise to gain the wind of the enemy, he will put up a red flag upon the spritsail, topmast shrouds, forestay, or fore topmast-stay. He that first discovers this signal shall make sail, and hoist and lower his jack and ensign, that the rest of the ships may take notice thereof and follow.
9. If we put a red flag on the mizen shrouds or the mizen yard-arm, we would have all the flagships to come up in the wake or grain of us. ”

“ Watchers on a lonely lightship, far from land, can appeal in trouble to their friends on shore. The Admiral of a great war fleet can send his voiceless commands through space, unhampered by wire or cable, unhindered by fog or storm. ”

“ If you discover any sail at sea, either to windward or to leeward of the admiral, or if any two or three of our fleet shall discover any such like sail which the admiral cannot discern, if she be a great ship and but one, you shall strike your main topsail and hoist it again so often as you judge the ship to be hundred tons of burthen ”

“ Upon the windlass, the bulwarks, the fore-mast shrouds, around the head, and out to the bowsprit-end, was a continuous swarm of human forms, so thickly clustered that scarce any part of the vessel could be seen, except the fore-mast, with its spars and rigging towering high above. ”

“ Midway the height of our little mizzenmast streamed the ensign which Caudel or another of the men had hoisted—the union down—but our wrecked mast, and the fellow labouring at the pump must have told our story to the sight of that ship, with an eloquence that could gather but little emphasis from the signal of distress streaming like a square of flame half-mast high at our stern. ”

“ But while observing the destruction of the ship, I beheld, high up the tallest mast, the figure of an old man—his white hair scorched upon his brows—his blood-shot eyes bursting from their sockets—his trembling limbs clinging to the rigging, screaming for mercy and for help. ”

“ An old soldier, inured to toil and hardship, gave up his place on the bench to the newcomer, and seated himself on the edge of the vessel, keeping his balance by planting his feet against one of those traverse beams, like the backbone of a fish, that hold the planks of a boat together. ”

“ By the flashes of their muskets, as well as from three or four guns, which the gunner and his crew had time to discharge, the whole dreadful scene was disclosed for an instant, never to be erased from my memory: The ship, with her bow run high upon the berg; her tall masts, with their yards and sails going by the board; the dark ocean and the white-crested seas dashing over her stern, amid which stood a mass of human beings, in all the attitudes of agonised despair and dismay, except those few drilled to obedience, who knew not the danger. ”

“ Day after day the three ships lay motionless on the glassy water, with wood-work so hot as to burn the hands that touched it, with the meat putrefying in the casks below, and the water running from the loosened casks, and no one with courage and endurance enough to venture into the stifling hold even to save the provisions. And through all this the Admiral, racked with gout, had to keep a cheerful face and assure his prostrate crew that they would soon be out of it. ”

“ There never was a vessel that had a greater partiality for the ground than ours—and when once her keel and the sand came in contact, it was as difficult to separate them as to disengage two furious mastiffs joined in mortal combat. ”

“ I could discern the heels of the fore and main masts, and the well of the ship's pump, while farther away was a stack of imperishable ship's stores, from which a number of rats darted, seemingly unmindful of our presence.
When we gained the daylight once more I blinked like an owl, breathing in the fresh air with a relish that the stifling atmosphere of between decks had caused; but short was my respite, for my new friend asked me whether I would be bold enough to go to the foretopmast head. ”

“ There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from every part of the horizon toward the short white jetty, which swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were [31] coming in, faster and slower, toward the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their top-weight of tangled antlers. ”

“ Nearly two hundred vessels there were with red and numbered mains'ls creaking aloft, with mizzens taut and jibs bellied, with block and tackle whining, all behaving as if glad to be away in quest of those grounds where swells run deep and each has combat or adventure of its own. ”

“ The young hero, holding a crucifix in his hand, shouted encouraging words to the Christian soldiers.
The blare of trumpets, roll of drums, and shouts of command echoed from the rocky shores.
The armada moved forward, the admiral's galley, with Don Juan, at its head.
The Turkish fleet advanced to meet it.
The young lion no longer asked the wise counsel of the experienced admiral. He desired nothing, thought of nothing, issued no orders, except "forward," "attack," "board," "kill," "sink," "destroy!" ”

“ The chief differences which appear in the several “counterfeit presentments” of the historic ship are in the number of her masts and the height of her poop and her forecastle. A few make her a brig or “snow” of the oldest pattern, while others depict her as a full-rigged ship, sometimes having the auxiliary rig of a small “jigger” or “dandy-mast,” with square or lateen sail, on peak of stern, or on the bow sprit, or both, though usually her mizzenmast is set well aft upon the poop. ”