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Untitled Article
fell like a shower of rain over the whole hull , from stem to stern , and rattled like a hail-storm . * Go on , my fine fellows ; you will catch it presently : we shall speak to you in a minute , when our tongues can be better heard . Now for it ! c Shorten
sail ! ' Up run the courses . Top-gallant-sails and royals are in with the word . Nothing on her but three top-sails and a jib . ' Stand to your guns / rings like the full diapason burst of an organ in a void church : all is hushed . Another tightening twitch at handkerchiefs , and more rows of set teeth shown , or lips hardened together—smack ! bang ! crack ! whizz 1 They are pouring it into us across our larboard bows , from the other division
of gun-boats ; then it is high time . So , < Watch her as she conies up to the wind . —Luff / ' Fire !'—and a thousand pounds of iron is rained from her twenty-three sulphur fountains ; roundshot , grape , and canister , all hissing and banging together ; the huge bulk recoils , and every mast , rib , and beam in her quakes in the thundering weight of the blow she has given : and , the next
instant , what a horrible confusion of screech and howl rises above the cannons' bellowing ! it is frightful ! The whole shower fell in the very midst of them ; and scores of men are swimming about for dear life ; one gun-boat sinks "beneath the boiling whirl . * Over to the larboard guns;—stand by ;—take good aim , as she
falls off . Up with the helm !—fire ! ' Another recoil , and a similar quaking fore and aft , alow and aloft . So , we are at it , ' hammer and tongs ; ' ' all order is orderless . ' Two minutes since all was so death-like quiet—now such yelling , hurraing , hallooing , leaping , tugging , clattering of ropes , and grumbling of blocks , as if all the tenants of the lower regions , black from the smoke , had
broken loose and gone mad . Now the rookery on our starboard side gives us a second edition , embellished with bar , grape , and canister ; but it falls harmless ; nobody is hurt by it , except the tou gh oak ; two-thirds of the intended pelting either goes over us , or falls short . The fellows point their guns badly ; there is a little wabbling sea , which , though it does not shake our steadiness , causes them to roll and reel to it ; let but the breeze continue half an hour , and we shall make fishes ' meat of most of them , if they will stay so long . I cannot resist the invitation of curiosity , but poke my head through an idle port . Well done , little Grasshopper ! she skips among them , as if she were hunting fillets of sunshine in a crocus-meadow ; and Mercury flings his wings
about , as if he were shaking the dew from his feathers . Bursting forth from the many black iron mouths , and whirling rapidly in thick rings , till it swells into hills and mountains , through which the sharp red tongue of death darts flash after flash , and mingling fire , the smoke slowly rolls upward like a curtain , in awful beauty ,
and exhibits the glistening water and the hulls of the combat ants beneath ; while the lofty mast-heads and points of yard arms seem as if cut away from the bodies to which they belong
Untitled Article
220 Autobiography ofVel . Verjuice .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 220, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/64/
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