esay
five hundred rank and file, at the fewest, were all cascading at one
and the same moment,--a thousand poor fellows turned outside in, like
so many pairs of old stockings. Any glory in that? But to proceed.

Next morning the gale still continued, and when the day broke there was
the frigate standing across our bows, rolling and pitching, as she tore
her way through the boiling sea, under a close-reefed main-topsail and
reefed foresail, with top-gallant-yards and royal masts, and everything
that could be struck with safety in war-time, down on deck. There she
lay, with her clear black bends, and bright white streak, and long tier
of cannon on the maindeck, and the carronades on the quarterdeck and
forecastle grinning through the ports in the black bulwarks, while the
white hammocks, carefully covered by the hammock-cloths, crowned the
defences of the gallant frigate fore and aft, as she delved through the
green surge--one minute rolling and rising on the curling white crest
of a mountainous sea, amidst a hissing snowstorm of spray, with her
bright copper glancing from stem to stern, and her scanty white canvas
swelling aloft, and twenty feet of her keel forward occasionally hove
into the air and clean out of the water, as if she had been a sea-bird
rushing to take wing--and the next, sinking entirely out of
sight--hull, masts, and rigging--behind an intervening sea, that rose
in hoarse thunder between us, threatening to overwhelm both us and her.
As for the transports, the largest of the three had lost her
foretopmast, and had bore up under her foresail; another was also
scudding under a close-reefed fore-topsail; but the third or
head-quarter ship was still lying to windward, under her storm
staysails. None of the merchant vessels were to be seen, having been
compelled to bear up in the night, and to run before it under bare
poles.

At length, as the sun rose, we got before the wind, and it soon
moderated so far that we could carry reefed topsails and foresail; and
away we all bowled, with a clear, deep, cold, blue sky, and a bright
sun overhead, and a stormy leaden-coloured ocean with whitish
green-crested billows, below. The sea continued to go down, and the
wind to slacken, until the afternoon, when the commodore made the
signal for the _Torch_ to send a boat's crew, the instant it could be
done with safety, on board the dismasted ship to assist in repairing
damages and in getting up a jury-foretopmast.