At last, having lost her fore and maintopmasts, her mizzenmast having been shot away to the deck, and her foreyard lying in two pieces on her shattered forecastle, having been hulled in a hundred places with round shot, the Macedonian was reduced to the last extremity.

At four A.M. I was relieved by Thomson, who at daylight apprized me that the maintopmast was sprung, and that the gale was increasing.

a huge shell from an Armstrong eighteen-ton gun burst between the fore and mainmasts; the bow pivot-gun was dismounted; ten men of her crew down; the maintopmast stays cut, and the maintopmast tottering.

a huge shell from an Armstrong eighteen-ton gun burst between the fore and mainmasts; the bow pivot-gun was dismounted; ten men of her crew down; the maintopmast stays cut, and the maintopmast tottering.

She was a low strait schooner of about one hundred and fifty tons, painted black with a narrow white streak, a large head with the horn of plenty painted white, large maintopmast but no yards or sail on it.

Some days after this, they espied a Portuguese man-of war of 44 guns, which they chased, but gave it over by carrying away their maintopmast, so that they did not speak with her, for the Portuguese took no notice of them.

The spray rose in a dense sheet as high as the maintopmast would have been had it stood upright.