She
returned it hotly, striking down many of our good fellows; I myself
narrowly escaped one of the shot, which hit a man at my side,
carrying away his right arm clear from the shoulder.
We kept up the duel of firing for near an hour, and then I heard a
great cry go up that the admiral was wounded, and by and by Joe
comes to me with tears streaming down his cheeks, and says that the
admiral's right leg was shattered to pieces by a chain shot, and he
was carried below. But while he was still talking to me we heard a
great shout and there was Mr. Benbow being hoisted in his cradle on
to the quarterdeck, and crying out "Good cheer, my hearties! The
Frenchmen have given me a knock, but we've got 'em now and by God!
we'll beat 'em!"
And then they cheered him again, and he, sitting in his cradle,
making nothing of his dreadful pain, gave orders and shouted
encouragement for a good three hours.
When the morning light showed us the ship we had been fighting, she
appeared a mere ruin; her main yard down and shot to pieces, her
fore-topsail yard shot away, her mizzen mast by the board, all her
rigging gone, and her sides bored through and through with our
double-headed shot. And near by us stood my old ship the Falmouth,
which in the darkness had assisted us very much in crippling this
great vessel of seventy guns, the sternmost of the French squadron.
Soon afterwards we saw the other ships of the enemy bearing down
upon us before a strong easterly wind; at the same time the
Windsor, Pendennis and Greenwich, ahead of the enemy, ran to
leeward of the disabled ship, gave her their broadsides ('twas like
flogging a dead horse), and then stood to the southward.
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