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Page 66
The position of the men in the two ships was now exactly reversed. For
while the Serapis was tearing the Richard all to pieces below deck, and
had swept that covered part almost of the last man, the Richard's crowd
of musketry had complete control of the upper deck of the Serapis, where
it was almost impossible for man to remain unless as a corpse. Though in
the beginning, the tops of the Serapis had not been unsupplied with
marksmen, yet they had long since been cleared by the overmastering
musketry of the Richard. Several, with leg or arm broken by a ball, had
been seen going dimly downward from their giddy perch, like falling
pigeons shot on the wing.
As busy swallows about barn-eaves and ridge-poles, some of the Richard's
marksmen, quitting their tops, now went far out on their yard-arms,
where they overhung the Serapis. From thence they dropped hand-grenades
upon her decks, like apples, which growing in one field fall over the
fence into another. Others of their band flung the same sour fruit into
the open ports of the Serapis. A hail-storm of aerial combustion
descended and slanted on the Serapis, while horizontal thunderbolts
rolled crosswise through the subterranean vaults of the Richard. The
belligerents were no longer, in the ordinary sense of things, an English
ship and an American ship. It was a co-partnership and joint-stock
combustion-company of both ships; yet divided, even in participation.
The two vessels were as two houses, through whose party-wall doors have
been cut; one family (the Guelphs) occupying the whole lower story;
another family (the Ghibelines) the whole upper story.
Meanwhile, determined Paul flew hither and thither like the meteoric
corposant-ball, which shiftingly dances on the tips and verges of ships'
rigging in storms. Wherever he went, he seemed to cast a pale light on
all faces. Blacked and burnt, his Scotch bonnet was compressed to a
gun-wad on his head. His Parisian coat, with its gold-laced sleeve laid
aside, disclosed to the full the blue tattooing on his arm, which
sometimes in fierce gestures streamed in the haze of the cannonade,
cabalistically terrific as the charmed standard of Satan. Yet his
frenzied manner was less a testimony of his internal commotion than
intended to inspirit and madden his men, some of whom seeing him, in
transports of intrepidity stripped themselves to their trowsers,
exposing their naked bodies to the as naked shot The same was done on
the Serapis, where several guns were seen surrounded by their buff crews
as by fauns and satyrs.
At the beginning of the fray, before the ships interlocked, in the
intervals of smoke which swept over the ships as mist over
mountain-tops, affording open rents here and there--the gun-deck of the
Serapis, at certain points, showed, congealed for the instant in all
attitudes of dauntlessness, a gallery of marble statues--fighting
gladiators.
Stooping low and intent, with one braced leg thrust behind, and one arm
thrust forward, curling round towards the muzzle of the gun, there was
seen the _loader_, performing his allotted part; on the other side of
the carriage, in the same stooping posture, but with both hands holding
his long black pole, pike-wise, ready for instant use--stood the eager
_rammer and sponger_; while at the breech, crouched the wary _captain of
the gun_, his keen eye, like the watching leopard's, burning along the
range; and behind all, tall and erect, the Egyptian symbol of death,
stood the _matchman_, immovable for the moment, his long-handled match
reversed. Up to their two long death-dealing batteries, the trained men
of the Serapis stood and toiled in mechanical magic of discipline. They
tended those rows of guns, as Lowell girls the rows of looms in a cotton
factory. The Parcae were not more methodical; Atropos not more fatal;
the automaton chess-player not more irresponsible.
"Look, lad; I want a grenade, now, thrown down their main hatchway. I
saw long piles of cartridges there. The powder monkeys have brought them
up faster than they can be used. Take a bucket of combustibles, and
let's hear from you presently."
These words were spoken by Paul to Israel. Israel did as ordered. In a
few minutes, bucket in hand, begrimed with powder, sixty feet in air, he
hung like Apollyon from the extreme tip of the yard over the fated abyss
of the hatchway. As he looked down between the eddies of smoke into that
slaughterous pit, it was like looking from the verge of a cataract down
into the yeasty pool at its base. Watching, his chance, he dropped one
grenade with such faultless precision, that, striking its mark, an
explosion rent the Serapis like a volcano. The long row of heaped
cartridges was ignited. The fire ran horizontally, like an express on a
railway. More than twenty men were instantly killed: nearly forty
wounded. This blow restored the chances of battle, before in favor of
the Serapis.
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