- end_line
- 12286
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.278Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 12219
- text
- top-knots floating on their shaven skulls, like black snakes on
half-tide rocks. By those top-knots they believed that their Prophet
would drag them up to Paradise, but they sank fifty fathoms, my
hearties, to the bottom of the bay. ‘Ain’t the bloody ’Hometons going
to strike yet?’ cried my first loader, a Guernsey man, thrusting his
neck out of the port-hole, and looking at the Turkish
line-of-battle-ship near by. That instant his head blew by me like a
bursting Paixhan shot, and the flag of Neb Knowles himself was hauled
down for ever. We dragged his hull to one side, and avenged him with
the cooper’s anvil, which, endways, we rammed home; a mess-mate shoved
in the dead man’s bloody Scotch cap for the wad, and sent it flying
into the line-of-battle ship. By the god of war! boys, we hardly left
enough of that craft to boil a pot of water with. It was a hard day’s
work—a sad day’s work, my hearties. That night, when all was over, I
slept sound enough, with a box of cannister shot for my pillow! But you
ought to have seen the boat-load of Turkish flags one of our captains
carried home; he swore to dress his father’s orchard in colours with
them, just as our spars are dressed for a gala day.”
“Though you tormented the Turks at Navarino, noble Jack, yet you came
off yourself with only the loss of a splinter, it seems,” said a
top-man, glancing at our captain’s maimed hand.
“Yes; but I and one of the Lieutenants had a narrower escape than that.
A shot struck the side of my port-hole, and sent the splinters right
and left. One took off my hat rim clean to my brow; another _razed_ the
Lieutenant’s left boot, by slicing off the heel; a third shot killed my
powder-monkey without touching him.”
“How, Jack?”
“It _whizzed_ the poor babe dead. He was seated on a _cheese of wads_
at the time, and after the dust of the powdered bulwarks had blown
away, I noticed he yet sat still, his eyes wide open. ‘_My little
hero!_’ cried I, and I clapped him on the back; but he fell on his face
at my feet. I touched his heart, and found he was dead. There was not a
little finger mark on him.”
Silence now fell upon the listeners for a time, broken at last by the
Second Captain of the Top.
“Noble Jack, I know you never brag, but tell us what you did yourself
that day?”
“Why, my hearties, I did not do quite as much as my gun. But I flatter
myself it was that gun that brought clown the Turkish Admiral’s
main-mast; and the stump left wasn’t long enough to make a wooden leg
for Lord Nelson.”
“How? but I thought, by the way you pull a lock-string on board here,
and look along the sight, that you can steer a shot about right—hey,
Jack?”
“It was the Admiral of the fleet—God Almighty—who directed the shot
that dismasted the Turkish Admiral,” said Jack; “I only pointed the
gun.”
“But how did you feel, Jack, when the musket-ball carried away one of
your hooks there?”
“Feel! only a finger the lighter. I have seven more left, besides
thumbs; and they did good service, too, in the torn rigging the day
after the fight; for you must know, my hearties, that the hardest work
comes after the guns are run in. Three days I helped work, with one
hand, in the rigging, in the same trowsers that I wore in the action;
the blood had dried and stiffened; they looked like glazed red
morocco.”
- title
- Chunk 2