CRASH! the
Indiaman's cutwater in thick smoke beat in the schooner's broadside: down
went her masts to leeward like fishing-rods whipping the water; there was
a horrible shrieking yell; wild forms heaped off on the _Agra_, and were
hacked to pieces almost ere they reached the deck--a surge, a chasm in
the, sea, filled with an instant rush of engulphing waves, a long, awful,
grating, grinding noise, never to be forgotten in this world, all along
under the ship's keel--and the fearful majestic monster passed on over
the blank she had made, with a pale crew standing silent and awestruck on
her deck; a cluster of wild heads and staring eyeballs bobbing like corks
in her foaming wake, sole relic of the blotted-out Destroyer: and a
wounded man staggering on the gangway, with hands uplifted and staring
eyes.
Shot in two places, the head and the breast!
With a loud cry of pity and dismay, Sharpe, Fullalove, Kenealy, and
others rushed to catch him; but ere they got near, the captain of the
triumphant ship fell down on his hands and knees, his head sunk over the
gangway, and his blood ran fast and pattered in the midst of them on the
deck he had defended so bravely.
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