, when the men were
knocked off to go to their well-earned dinner. Then, indeed, we found
time to look around us and to ask ourselves and each other where the
French were and what they were doing. There was no difficulty in
furnishing a reply to either question, for our antagonists were only a
bare four miles off, and close together. But bad as our own plight was,
theirs was very much worse; for we now saw that the frigate which we had
raked so unmercifully was in a sinking condition, having settled so low
in the water indeed that the sills of her main-deck ports were awash and
dipping with every sluggish heave of her upon the low and almost
imperceptible swell, while her own boats and those of her consort were
busily engaged in taking off her crew. With the aid of my telescope I
could distinctly see all that was going on, and I saw also that the end
of the gallant craft was so near as to render her disappearance a matter
of but a few minutes. Hungry, therefore, as I was, I determined to
remain on deck and see the last of her. Nor had I long to wait; I had
scarcely arrived at the decision that I would do so, when, as I watched
her through my glass, I saw the boats that hung around her shoving off
hurriedly one after the other, until one only remained. Presently that
one also shoved off, and, loaded down to her gunwale, pulled, as hastily
as her overloaded condition would permit, toward the other frigate. She
had scarcely placed half a dozen fathoms between herself and the sinking
ship before the latter rolled heavily to port, slowly recovered herself,
and then rolled still more heavily to starboard, completely burying the
whole tier of her starboard ports as she did so. She hung thus for
perhaps half a minute, settling visibly all the time; finally she
_staggered_, as it were, once more to an even keel, but with her stern
dipping deeper and deeper every second until her taffrail was buried,
while her battered bows lifted slowly into the air, when, the
inclination of her decks rapidly growing steeper, she suddenly took a
sternward plunge and vanished from sight in the midst of a sudden swirl
of water that was distinctly visible through the lenses of the
telescope. The occupants of the boat that had so recently left her saw
their danger and put forth herculean efforts to avoid it; they were too
near, however, to escape, and despite all their exertions the boat was
caught and dragged back into the vortex created by