Devonshire Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Devonshire Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Devon (England) -- Biography; Devon (England) -- History
“Then I took the Crow and leap’t down with it into the Forecastle and
drew the Spikes and opened the Scuttle, and bid the Man come down and
joyn his Companions. And after that I nailed down the Scuttle again,
and went aft and ordered the Boy to stand by the Steeridg Door again,
and I took the Candles and the Blunderbuss and went down between Decks
and looked in all Holes and Corners for the two wounded Men and found
them not. Then I went on Deck, and told the Boy I could not find the
Men, and he said they were certainly run overboard. I told him I would
know what was become of them before I made sail.
“Then I told the Boy I would go up into the Maintop, and see if they
were there; and so I gave him the Blunderbuss and bid him present it at
the Maintop, and if he saw any man look out over the Top with anything
in his Hand to throw at me, he should then shoot them. Then I took the
Boy’s Bolt, and went up, and when I was got to the Puddick Shrouds I
look’d forwards to the Foretop, I saw the two Men were cover’d with the
Foretopsail, and their Sashes bound about their Heads to keep in the
Blood, and they had made a great part of the Foretopsail Bloody, and as
the Ship rould, the Blood ran over the Top. Then I call’d to them, and
they turn’d out and went down on their knees, and wrung their Hands,
and cried, _O corte, corte, Monsieur_. Then I said, Good Quarter shall
you have, And I went down and call’d to them to come down, and he that
the Boy wounded came down, and kissed my Hand over and over, and went
down into the Forecastle very willingly. But the other Man was one of
the three that I designed to kill; he delayed his Coming. I took the
Blunderbuss and said I would shoot him down, and then he came a little
way and stood still, and begged me to give him Quarter. I told him if
he would come down he should have quarter. Then he came down and I gave
the Boy the Blunderbuss”--and then ensued the redrawing of the nails
and the reopening of the scuttle, so as to thrust these two wounded
men in with the others. But Lyde called up one of the men, a fellow of
about four-and-twenty, and who had shown Lyde some kindness when he was
a prisoner on the ship. We need not follow Lyde in his voyage home. He
made the Frenchman help to navigate the vessel. But they had still many
difficulties to overcome, the weather was rough, the ship leaked, and
there were but Lyde and the Frenchman and the boy to handle her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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