I forgot, even, to watch the shore of the island for the boats that had gone to get Nathaniel and the rest of the crew of the Royal Savage; for the black schooner was in trouble. Half her guns had ceased to fire, and she was listing—not much, but listing nonetheless. Even the eighteen-pounders on our afterdeck seemed to sense, from the shouts and caperings of their crews, that there was an advantage to be pressed. Their stupendous belchings became sharper and more hurried, or so I thought.

We could see what had happened. The Carleton’s spring had been shot away, and because of it, she was swinging head to wind once more: swinging bow on, into a position where she could bring no gun to bear on us, and where we, for the same reason, could rake her with every shot.

The black schooner hung there, head on. “Sink her!” the men shouted. “Sink her!” They cursed the schooner, as if she had been a disobedient dog.

One of her jibs went up. It would not fill, but flapped and shivered in the northeast wind. An officer scrambled out on the bowsprit, seized the stay and kicked at the jib to make it draw. He threw himself against it, whipping at it with his body. The schooner hung there. Her head would not pay off.

Arnold shook his fist at the gun-crews, spurring them on: then turned and came up the gangway to where I stood at the lee swivels. “Get me a bucket of water,” he said to one of the swivel gunners. To me he said in a strained, hoarse voice, “Let’s have some rum: rum all ’round. My God, I’m dry!”

I sent Tom Bickford for the rum, and thought to myself that Arnold was a caution. Exertions, losses, disappointments, danger, death—nothing seemed to disturb him. He looked at his shot-pierced hat, tore off the hanging piece of gold lace, winked at me, and dropped the hat to the deck while he pulled up his sleeves to rinse his blackened hands and face in the bucket of water the swivel gunner brought him.

Flapping his hands to dry them, he stood on tiptoe to peer over the spruce butts at the black schooner. There was an oily glare to the water between the two fleets. Smoke layers undulated above it, and a pale sun threw a silvery glitter in our eyes. From the position of the sun in the south, the day was only half gone. It seemed incredible that this could be so, since the battle had only just begun. It occurred to me, then, that the Revenge had warned us of the approach of the British fleet this very morning; and that warning now seemed something that had reached us long ago, in the dim past.