Page:Wonderful adventures of sixteen British seamen.pdf/12

 intended for disembarkation next morning. In this state it was impossible that the vessel could sail an inch, and there was no time to be lost, for an entire quarter of an hour had elapsed since they got on board, and at day-dawn the fort would at once discover what had happened-so the Indian was dispatched to the cuddy, where a number of the defeated seamen had taken refuge, to learn where the sails had been stowed—they werowere [sic] below, and the rolling of several guns from the ship's side to the middle of the deck, with a few intimations, "upon oath," that they were ready for thothe [sic] work of destruction, soon induced the Spaniards to hand the sails upon deck. The topmasts were soon swayed away, also the foreyard and topsail yards. In any other than the most desperatodesperate [sic] circumstances, they would have been altogether unequal to the fatigue which, exhausted as they were by previous labour and want, they sustained in putting the vessel in such trim as to enabloenable [sic] her to sail out of the harbour. At length the sails were bent, but then there was hardly enough of wind to make them flap against the masts. It was, in fact, and had been all night, a perfect calm. The situation of the captors became every moment more perilous. Should morning dawn upon them where they lay, they were lost; for what defence could they make against a combined attack from the fort and from all the boats of Arica? Already voices were heard on the shore, and they dreaded that an early visit to the ship would be the first duty of the custom-house officers. They werowere [sic] in an agony of hope, fear, and anxiety. Daniel in the den of lions was not more awkward or uncomfortably situated; and yet, what could they do? Why, without wind they could do