Pitching and rolling
heavily, she lay; sometimes, as a sea struck her, half buried in a
grey-green mountain of foam and flying spray that left her spouting
cascades of water from her scuppers; one moment, as she rose, heaving
her fore-foot clean out of the water, showing the glint of the copper on
her bottom; the next, plunging wildly down, till some mighty billow,
roaring aloft between the vessels, hid each from the other's ken as
effectually as if the ocean had swallowed them.
The stranger had hoisted French colours, and the _Sirius_ beat to
quarters. But as far as possibility of engaging was concerned, the ships
might have been a hundred leagues apart: the sea ran far too high. And
so there all day they lay, impotent to harm each other.
When grey dawn came on the second morning, bringing with it weather more
moderate, the French frigate was seen under easy sail far to leeward,
evidently repairing damage aloft, and, in spite of every effort on the
part of the _Sirius_, it was late afternoon ere the first shot was
fired.
Darkness had begun to fall as the French ship struck her colours after a
bloody action in which her losses mounted to over one hundred men,
including her captain and several officers. In less degree the _Sirius_
suffered; and of those who fell, Watty was one.
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