e, hold hard, lad," cried Paul, springing to his side with a coil of
rigging. With a few rapid turns he knitted himself to his foe. The wind
now acting on the sails of the Serapis forced her, heel and point, her
entire length, cheek by jowl, alongside the Richard. The projecting
cannon scraped; the yards interlocked; but the hulls did not touch. A
long lane of darkling water lay wedged between, like that narrow canal
in Venice which dozes between two shadowy piles, and high in air is
secretly crossed by the Bridge of Sighs. But where the six yard-arms
reciprocally arched overhead, three bridges of sighs were both seen and
heard, as the moon and wind kept rising.

Into that Lethean canal--pond-like in its smoothness as compared with
the sea without--fell many a poor soul that night; fell, forever
forgotten.

As some heaving rent coinciding with a disputed frontier on a volcanic
plain, that boundary abyss was the jaws of death to both sides. So
contracted was it, that in many cases the gun-rammers had to be thrust
into the opposite ports, in order to enter to muzzles of their own
cannon. It seemed more an intestine feud, than a fight between
strangers. Or, rather, it was as if the Siamese Twins, oblivious of
their fraternal bond, should rage in unnatural fight.

Ere long, a horrible explosion was heard, drowning for the instant the
cannonade. Two of the old eighteen-pounders--before spoken of, as having
been hurriedly set up below the main deck of the Richard--burst all to
pieces, killing the sailors who worked them, and shattering all that
part of the hull, as if two exploded steam-boilers had shot out of its
opposite sides. The effect was like the fall of the walls of a house.
Little now upheld the great tower of Pisa but a few naked crow
stanchions. Thenceforth, not a few balls from the Serapis must have
passed straight through the Richard without grazing her. It was like
firing buck-shot through the ribs of a skeleton.

But, further forward, so deadly was the broadside from the heavy
batteries of the Serapis--levelled point-blank, and right down the
throat and bowels, as it were, of the Richard--that it cleared
everything before it. The men on the Richard's covered gun-deck ran
above, like miners from the fire-damp. Collecting on the forecastle,
they continued to fight with grenades and muskets. The soldiers also
were in the lofty tops, whence they kept up incessant volleys, cascading
their fire down as pouring la