with frantic
energy whirled it hard up. By the greatest good luck the helmsman had
already put the wheel a spoke or two over as the crest of the sea swept
under us, so that we were actually paying-off at the moment that I took
the wheel. This fact, combined with the additional amount of helm which
I gave her, and the lightning-like rapidity with which little Smellie
whipped out his keen pocket-knife and drew it across the straining
strands of the mizzen-sheet, saved the "Vigilant." The mizzen flogged
itself to ribbons in a moment, while the foresail paid our bows broad
off, and, filling powerfully at the same time, dragged us clear by the
bare skin of our teeth. The frigate rushed foaming past our stern, so
closely that the surge from her port bow dashed in over our taffrail,
and the leach of her lower stunsail, catching the head of our mizzen-
mast, buckled the spar until the port shrouds parted, when, luckily for
us, _crack_ went her stunsail-boom and her lower and fore-topmast
stunsail began to thrash about so wildly, that they promised to give her
crew their hands full to get in the sails without injury to any of the
men.

Passing each other in such disagreeably close proximity, we had of
course a perfect view of the French frigate, and a most superb craft she
certainly was. A bran-new ship, to all appearance: she seemed to have
been at sea scarcely long enough to wash the varnish off her teak and
mahogany deck-fittings. The planks of her deck were almost snow-white,
and some little taste and trouble appeared to have been expended in a
successful effort to impart a graceful effect to the decorations about
the front of her spacious poop, beneath the over-hanging pent-house of
which appeared her handsome steering-wheel, with four men hard--a great
deal _too_ hard, it seemed to me--at work at it. She showed eighteen
ports of a side, all closed, and carried her due proportion of
carronades on her forecastle and quarter-deck. Her masts, magnificent
sticks, and her short stout yards were bending like fishing-rods under
the tremendous strain of her new canvas, which appeared as though it had
not yet fully stretched into its proper shape; and every rope was coiled
down in its proper place with the most scrupulous neatness. But, oh!
the confusion and jabber and excitement of her crew. As she shaved past
us, every man on deck jumped upon the hammock-rail and had his separate
say to us--whether it were a word of cau