Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/186

174 full of men busy trimming her yards. The sailing master, watching her through a telescope from the fo'c's'le, declared her to be a French Guineaman, swimming deep. Another swore that she was out of Lisbon, a sugar ship bound home. The men hauled the spritsail yard alongships, crying out that they would have sweet punch for supper. The wind freshened. The men aloft loosed the topgallant sails. The helmsman stood smoking at the tiller. On deck was nothing but a babble of cries, drowned every two or three minutes by the cannon.

But Joe lay where he had fallen, heedless of everything. When some men came to man the cannon at his side, they picked him up by the heels and lifted him below to the sail-locker. They flung him down upon a mainsail, and went back to their firing. They were all drunk and careless. And though, when the chase ran her guns out and hung out the King's colours, they made some sort of a battle of it, they were too drunk to do much. In a very few minutes their decks were being swept, their guns knocked over, their ports beaten from the side, and their men driven from their