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Untitled Article
ness was hidden by the glare which surrounded me ; and it was , indeed , most exhilirating to be running along the land , inviting the whistle of a shot from the batteries ; to fasten my eyes on the ever-varying picture—making a moving diorama , new every hour , which land , and towers , and battlements , and cities presented in our course ; and clutching at that which endeavoured to escape . It . was on one of these temporary absences of the
fleet that I had my first practical lesson of f shot in anger / as it is called ; though there was more laughing , and cheering , and hurraing , on our side , than anger . The A- ¦ , Mercury , and Grasshopper , were lying at single anchor off the lighthouse , when a large drove of small craft , bold in the convoy of a flotilla of gunboats , and the great distance of the English fleet , came swaggering round Point Chipiona , from San Lucar and other parts NW . of Cadiz , standing with fair wind for the latter place ; apparently confident that we were too weak to venture on
attacking them ; while another flotilla of gunboats stood out from Cadiz to strengthen them , and the combined French and Spanish fleets were at such an easy distance , that they could intercept and destroy us , if we did stand in to annoy them . We lay very quiet ; but no sooner had they advanced sufficiently far to leeward to render retreating round Chipiona before we could
be in amongst them , impossible , than each anchor was tripped , and instantly , at once , our little squadron heeled to the load ot canvass with which they were crowded . While we were lying so innocently still , every thing had been prepared—bulk-heads clown—a clean sweep , fore and aft , of the main deck—shot-racks ranged - — breechings cast loose—tompions out — gun-tackles coiled down—fearnought screens suspended over the hatchways ,
through which powder was to be handpd—fires out—my friend , the goat , sent down to the cablo-tier—the captain ' s ducks and geese left in the coops , to cackle and quake , and take their chance —the doctor ' s saws , and knives , and probos , and bandages , and tourniquets , all laid in order , in the cockpit , and I devoutly hoping , as , tempted by curiosity , I looked at them , that I might be blown away altogether , rather than that he should exercise his skill on
my limbs or carcase . And every man and boy was mute as he stood at his station . Here and there might be seen one drawing the knot of the handkerchief , girt around his loins , or that of his head-bandages : all grim in lip and glistening in eye . Luckily there was not much time to think ; and , in ten minutes from our getting under way , the flotilla , which came
out of the harbour , let fly a thundering compliment from a scoro of four-and-twenty pounders : some of the shot of which phizzed and whizzed and split through the sails and rigging , like the bursting of a logion of ' scape-valves in &team-oiiginct »; others fell just alongside , with a abort sharp chop , as if they were cutting the ocean into splinters ; and threw up a deluge of spray , which
Untitled Article
Autobiography o / Pd . Ferjuiee * 919
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 219, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/63/
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