WE FALL IN WITH A SALLEE ROVER.
"We laid them aboard the larboard side--
With hey! with ho! for and a nonny no!
And we threw them into the sea so wide,
And alongst the Coast of Barbary."
_The Sailor's Onely Delight_.
My father, checked in the midst, or rather at the outset, of a
panegyric upon love, could not rest until he had found an ear into
which to deliver it; but that same evening, after the moon had risen,
drew Nat aside on the poop, and discharged the whole harangue upon
him; the result being that the dear lad, who already fancied himself
another Rudel in quest of the Lady of Tripoli, spent the next two
days in composing these verses, the only ones (to my knowledge) ever
finished by him:
NAT FIENNES' SONG TO THE UNDISCOVERED LADY.
"Thou, thou, that art
My port, my refuge, and my goal,
I have no chart,
No compass but a heart
Trembling t'ward thee and to no other pole.
"My star! Adrift
On seas that well-nigh overwhelm,
Still when they lift
I strain toward the rift,
And steer, and hold my courage to the helm.
"With ivory comb,
Daylong thou dalliest dreaming where
The rainbow foam
Enisles thy murmuring home:
Home too for me, though I behold it ne'er!
"Yet when the bird
Is tired, and each little wave,
Aloft is heard
A call, reminds thee gird
Thy robe and climb to where the summits rave:
"Yea, to the white
Lone sea-mark shaken on the verge--
'What of the night?'
Ah, climb--ah, lift the light!
Ah, lamp thy lover labouring in the surge!
"Fray'd rope, burst sail,
Drench'd wing, as moth toward the spark--
I fetch, I fail,
Glad only that the gale
Breaks not my faith upon the brutal dark.
"Be it frost or fire,
Thy bosom, I believed it warm:
I did aspire
For that, and my desire--
Burn thou or freeze--fought thro' and beat the storm.
"Thou, thou, that art
My sole salvation, fixed, afar,
I have no chart,
No compass but a heart
Hungry for thee and for no other star."
"Humph!" said I, by way of criticism, when these verses were shown to
me. "Where be the mackerel lines, Captain Jo? There's too much
love-talk aboard this ship of yours."
"Mackerel?" said Captain Jo. "Why, where's your bait?"
"You shall lend me an inch off your pipe-stem," said I, and, to tease
Nat, began to hum the senseless old song:
"She has ta'en a siller wand
An' gi'en strokes three,
An' chang'd my sister Masery
To a mack'rel of the sea.
And every Saturday at noon
The mack'rel comes to me,
An' she takes my laily head
An' lays it on her knee,
An' kames it wi' a kame o' pearl,
An' washes it i' the sea--"
"Mackerel?" said Captain Pomery. "If ye found one fool enough to
take hold at the rate we're sailing, ye'd pull his head off."
"Why, then, he would be off his head," answered I: "and there are
plenty here to make him feel at home."
In truth I was nettled; jealous, as a lad in his first friendship is
quick to be. Were not Nat and I of one age? Then why should he be
leaving thoughts we might share, to think of woman? I had chafed at
Oxford against his precocious entanglements. Here on shipboard his
propensity was past a joke; with no goose in sight to mistake for a
swan, he must needs conjure up an imaginary princess for his
devotion. What irritated most of all was his assuming, because I had
not arrived at his folly, the right to treat me as a child.
South and across the Bay of Biscay the weather gave us a halcyon
passage; the wind falling lighter and lighter until, within ten
leagues of Gibraltar, we ran into a flat calm, and Captain Pomery's
face began to show his vexation.
The vexation I could understand--for your seaman naturally hates calm
weather--but scarcely the degree of it in a man of temperament so
placid. Hitherto he had taken delight in the strains of Mr.
Badcock's flute. Suddenly, and almost pettishly, he laid an embargo
on that instrument, and moreover sent word down to the hold and
commanded old Worthyvale to desist from hammering on the ballast.
All noise, in fact, appeared to irritate him.
Mr. Badcock pocketed his flute in some dudgeon, and for occupation
fell to drinking with Mr. Fett; whose potations, if they did not
sensibly lighten the ship, heightened, at least, her semblance of
buoyancy with a deck-cargo of empty bottles. My father put no
restraint upon these topers.
"Drink, gentlemen," said he; "drink by all means so long as it amuses
you. I had far rather you exceeded than that I should appear
inhospitable."
"Magnifshent old man," Mr. Fett hiccuped to me confidentially,
"_an'_ magnifshent liquor. As the song shays--I beg your pardon, the
shong says--able 'make a cat speak an' man dumb--
"Like 'n old courtier of the queen's
An' the queen's old courtier--"
Chorus, Mr. Bawcock, _if_ you please, an', by the way, won't mind my
calling you Bawcock, will you? Good Shakespearean word, bawcock:
euphonious, too--
"Accomplisht eke to flute it and to sing,
Euphonious Bawcock bids the welkin ring."
"If," said Mr. Badcock, in an injured tone and with a dark glance aft
at Captain Pomery, "if a man don't _like_ my playing, he has only to
say so. I don't press it on any one. From all I ever heard, art is
a matter of taste. But I don't understand a man's being suddenly
upset by a tune that, only yesterday, he couldn't hear often enough."
Out of the little logic I had picked up at Oxford I tried to explain
to him the process known as _sorites_; and suggested that Captain
Pomery, while tolerant of "I attempt from Love's sickness to fly" up
to the hundredth repetition, might conceivably show signs of tiring
at the hundred-and-first. Yet in my heart I mistrusted my own
argument, and my wonder at the skipper's conduct increased when, the
next dawn finding us still becalmed, but with the added annoyance of
a fog that almost hid the bowsprit's end, his demeanour swung back to
joviality. I taxed him with this, in my father's hearing.
"I make less account of fogs than most men," he answered. "I can
smell land; which is a gift and born with me. But this is no weather
to be caught in anywhere near the Sallee coast; and if we're to lose
the wind, let's have a good fog to hide us, I say."
He went on to assure us that the seas hereabouts were infested with
Moorish pirates, and to draw some dismal pictures of what might
happen if we fell in with a prowling Sallateen.
With all his fears he kept his reckoning admirably, and we
half-sailed, half-drifted through the Strait, and so near to the Rock
of Gibraltar that, passing within range of it at the hour of
reveilly, we heard the British bugles sounding to us like ghosts
through the fog. Captain Pomery here was in two minds about
laying-to and waiting for a breeze; but a light slant of wind
encouraged him to carry the _Gauntlet_ through. It bore us between
the invisible strait, and for a score of sea-miles beyond; then, as
casually as it had helped, it deserted us.
Day broke and discovered us with the Moorish coast low on our
starboard horizon. To Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock this meant nothing,
and my father might have left them to their ignorance had he not in
the course of the forenoon caught them engaged upon a silly piece of
mischief, which was, to scribble on small sheets of paper various
affecting narratives--as that the _Gauntlet_ was sinking, or
desperately attacked by pirates, in such and such a latitude and
longitude--insert them in empty bottles, and commit them to the
chances of the deep. The object (as Mr. Fett explained it) being to
throw Billy Priske's sweetheart off the scent. For two days past he
had been slyly working upon Billy's fears, and was relating to him
how, with two words, a Moorish lady had followed Gilbert a Becket
from Palestine to London, and found him there--when my father,
attracted by the smell of pitch, strolled forward and caught Mr.
Badcock in the act of sealing the bottles from a ladle which stood
heating over a lamp. In the next five minutes the pair learnt that
my father could lose his temper, and the lesson visibly scared them.
"Your pardon, sir," twittered Mr. Fett. "'Twas a foolish joke, I
confess."
"I may lend some point to it," answered my father grimly, "by telling
you what I had a mind to conceal, that you stand at this moment at no
far remove from one of the worst dangers you have playfully invented.
The wind has dropped again, as you perceive. Along the coast yonder
live the worst pirates in the world, and with a glass we may all but
discern the dreadful barracks in which so many hundreds of our
fellow-Christians lie at this moment languishing. Please God we are
only visible from the hill-country, and coast tribes may miss to
descry us! For our goal lies north and east, and to fail of it would
break my heart. But 'twere a high enterprise for England some day to
smoke out these robbers, and I know none to which a Christian man
could more worthily engage himself."
Mr. Badcock shivered. "In our parish church," said he, "we used to
take up a collection for these poor prisoners every Septuagesima.
Many a sermon have I listened to and wondered at their sufferings,
yet idly, as no doubt Axminster folk would wonder at this plight of
mine, could they hear of it at this moment."
"My father, his wrath being yet recent, did not spare to paint our
peril of capture and the possible consequences in lively colours; but
observing that Nat and I had drawn near to listen, he put on a
cheerfuller tone.
"He will turn all this to the note of love, and within five minutes,"
I whispered to Nat, "or I'll forfeit five shillings."
My father could not have heard me; yet pat on the moment he rose to
the bet as a fish to a fly.
"Yet love," said he, "love, the star of our quest, has shone before
now into these dungeons, these dark ways of blood, these black and
cruel hearts, and divinely illuminated them; as a score of histories
bear witness, and among them one you shall hear."
THE STORY OF THE ROVER AND THE LORD PROVOST'S DAUGHTER.
"In Edinburgh, in the Canongate, there stands a tenement known as
Morocco Land, over the second floor of which leans forward, like a
figure-head, the wooden statue of a Moor, black and naked, with a
turban and a string of beads; and concerning this statue the
following tale is told.
"In the reign of King James or King Charles I.--I cannot remember
which--there happened a riot in Edinburgh. Of its cause I am
uncertain, but in the progress of it the mob, headed by a young man
named Andrew Gray, set fire to the Lord Provost's house. The riot
having been quelled, its ringleaders were seized and cast into the
Tol-booth, and among them this Andrew Gray, who in due course was
brought to judgment, and in spite of much private influence (for he
came of good family) condemned to die. Before the day of execution,
however, his friends managed to spirit him out of prison, whence he
fled the country; and so escaped and in time was forgotten.
"Many years after, at a time when the plague was raging through
Edinburgh, a Barbary corsair sailed boldly up the Firth of Forth and
sent a message ashore to the Lord Provost, demanding twenty thousand
pounds ransom, and on a threat, if it were not paid within
twenty-four hours, to burn all the shipping in the firth and along
the quays. He required, meanwhile, a score of hostages for payment,
and among them the Lord Provost's own son.
"The Lord Provost ran about like a man demented; since, to begin
with, audacious as the terms were, the plague had spared him scarcely
a hundred men capable of resistance. Moreover, he had no son, but an
only daughter, and she was lying sick almost to death with the
distemper. So he made answer, promising the ransom, but explaining
that he for his part could send no hostage. To this the Sallee
captain replied politely--that he had some experience of the plague,
and possessed an elixir which (he made sure) would cure the maiden if
the Lord Provost would do him the honour to receive a visit; nay,
that if he failed to cure her, he would remit the city's ransom.
"You may guess with what delight the father consented. The pirate
came ashore in state, and was made welcome. The elixir was given;
the damsel recovered; and in due course she married her Paynim foe,
who now revealed himself as the escaped prisoner, Andrew Gray.
He had risen high in the service of the Emperor of Morocco, and had
fitted out his ship expressly to be revenged upon the city which had
once condemned him to death. The story concludes that he settled
down, and lived the rest of his life as one of its most reputable
citizens."
"But what was the elixir?" inquired Mr. Badcock.
"T'cht!" answered my father testily.
"I agree with you, sir," said Mr. Fett. "Mr. Badcock's question was
a foolish one. Speaking, however, as a mere man of business, and
without thought of rounding off the story artistically, I am curious
to know how they settled the ransom?"
Captain Pomery had taken in all canvas, to be as little conspicuous
as possible; and all that day we lay becalmed under bare poles.
Not content with this, he ordered out the boat, and the two seamen
(Mike Halliday and Roger Wearne their names were) took turns with Nat
and me in towing the _Gauntlet_ off the coast. It was back-breaking
work under a broiling sun, but before evening we had the satisfaction
to lose all sight of land. Still we persevered and tugged until
close upon midnight, when the captain called us aboard, and we
tumbled asleep on deck, too weary even to seek our hammocks.
At daybreak next morning (Sunday) my father roused me. A light wind
had sprung up from the shore, and with all canvas spread we were
slipping through the water gaily; yet not so gaily (doubted Captain
Pomery) as a lateen-sailed craft some four or five miles astern of
us--a craft which he announced to be a Moorish xebec.
The _Gauntlet_--a flattish-bottomed ship--footed it well before the
wind, but not to compare with the xebec, which indeed was little more
than a long open boat. After an hour's chase she had plainly reduced
our lead by a mile or more. Then for close upon an hour we seemed to
have the better of the wind, and more than held our own; whereat the
most of us openly rejoiced. For reasons which he kept to himself
Captain Pomery did not share in our elation.
For sole armament (besides our muskets) the ketch carried, close
after of her fore-hatchway, a little obsolete 3-pounder gun, long
since superannuated out of the Falmouth packet service. In the dim
past, when he had bid for her at a public auction, Captain Pomery may
have designed to use the gun as a chaser, or perhaps, even then, for
decoration only. She served now--and had served for many a peaceful
passage--but as a peg for spare coils of rope, and her rickety
carriage as a supplement, now and then, for the bitts, which were
somewhat out of repair. My father casting about, as the chase
progressed, to put us on better terms of defence, suggested unlashing
this gun and running her aft for a stern-chaser.
Captain Pomery shook his head. "Where's the ammunition? We don't
carry a single round shot aboard, nor haven't for years.
Besides which, she'd burst to a certainty."
"There's time enough to make up a few tins of canister," argued my
father. "Or stay--" He smote his leg.
"Didn't I tell you old Worthyvale would turn out the usefullest man
on board?"
"What's the matter with Worthyvale?"
"While we've been talking, Worthyvale has been doing. What has he
been doing?" Why, breaking up the ballast, and, if I'm not mistaken,
into stones of the very size to load this gun."
"Give Badcock and me some share of credit," pleaded Mr. Fett.
"Speaking less as an expert than from an imagination quickened by
terror of all missiles, I suggest that a hundredweight or so of empty
bottles, nicely broken up, would lend a d--d disagreeable diversity
to the charge--"
"Not a bad idea at all," agreed my father.
"And a certain sting to our defiance; since I understand these
ruffians drink nothing stronger than water," Mr. Fett concluded.
We spent the next half-hour in dragging the gun aft, and fetching up
from the hold a dozen basket-loads of stone. It required a personal
appeal from my father before old Worthyvale would part with so much
of his treasure.
During twenty minutes of this time, the xebec, having picked up with
the stronger breeze, had been shortening her distance (as Captain
Pomery put it) hand-over-fist. But no sooner had we loaded the
little gun and trained her ready for use, than my father, pausing to
mop his brow, cried out that the Moor was losing her breeze again.
She perceptibly slackened way, and before long the water astern of
her ceased to be ruffled. An oily calm spreading across the sea from
shoreward overhauled her by degrees, overtook, and held her, with
sails idle and sheets tautening and sagging as she rolled on the
heave of the swell.
Captain Pomery promptly checked our rejoicing, telling us this was
about the worst that could happen. "We shall carry this wind for
another ten minutes at the most," he assured us. "And these devils
have boats."
So it proved. Within ten minutes our booms were swinging uselessly;
the sea spread calm for miles around us; and we saw no fewer than
three boats being lowered from the xebec, now about four miles away.
"There is nothing but to wait for 'em," said my father, seating
himself on deck with his musket across his knees. "Mr. Badcock!"
"Sir?"
"To-day is Sunday."
"It is, sir. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thou hast to do,
but on the Seventh day (if you'll excuse me) there's a different kind
of feeling in the air. At home, sir, I have observed that even the
rooks count on it."
"You have a fine voice, Mr. Badcock, and have been, as I gather, an
attentive hearer of sermons."
"I may claim that merit, sir."
"If you can remember one sufficiently well to rehearse it to us, I
feel that it would do us all good."
Mr. Badcock coughed. "Oh, sir," he protested, "I couldn't! I reelly
couldn't. You'll excuse me, but I hold very strong opinions on
unlicensed preaching." He hesitated; then suddenly his brow cleared.
"But I can read you one, sir. _Reading_ one is altogether another
matter."
"You have a book of sermons on board?"
"Before starting, sir, happening to cast my eye over the book-case in
the bedroom . . . a volume of Dr. South's, sir, if you'll excuse my
liberty in borrowing it."
He ran and fetched the volume, while we disposed ourselves to listen.
"Where shall I begin, sir?"
"Wherever you please. The book belongs to my brother Gervase.
For myself I have not even a bowing acquaintance with the good
Doctor."
"The first sermon, sir, is upon Human Perfection."
"It should have been the last, surely?"
"Not so, sir; for it starts with Adam in the Garden of Eden."
"Let us hear, then."
Mr. Badcock cleared his throat and read:
"The image of God in man is that universal rectitude of all the
faculties of the soul, by which they stand apt and disposed to
their respective offices and operations."
"Hold a moment," interrupted my father, whose habit of commenting
aloud in church had often disconcerted Mr. Grylls. "Are you quite
sure, Mr. Badcock, that we are not starting with the Doctor's
peroration?"
"This is the first page, sir."
"Then the Doctor himself began at the wrong end. Prosper, will you
take a look astern and report me how many boats are coming?"
"Three, sir," said I. "The third has just pushed off from the ship."
"Thank you. Proceed, Mr. Badcock."
"And first for its noblest faculty, the understanding. It was
then sublime, clear, and aspiring, and as it were the soul's
upper region, lofty and serene, free from the vapours and
disturbances of the inferior affections. . . . Like the sun it
had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion; no
quiet but in activity. . . . It did arbitrate upon the several
reports of sense, and all the varieties of imagination; not
like a drowsy judge, only hearing, but also directing their
verdict. In sum, it was vegete quick and lively; open as the
day, untainted as the morning, full of the innocence and
sprightliness of youth; it gave the soul a bright and a full
view into all things."
"A fine piece of prose," remarked Mr. Fett as Mr. Badcock drew
breath.
"A fine fiddlestick, sir!" quoth my father. "The man is talking
largely on matters of which he can know nothing; and in five minutes
(I bet you) he will come a cropper."
Mr. Badcock resumed--
"For the understanding speculative there are some general maxims
and notions in the mind of man, which are the rules of
discourse and the basis of all philosophy."
"As, for instance, never to beg the question," snapped my father, who
from this point let scarce a sentence pass without pishing and
pshawing.
"Now it was Adam's happiness in the state of innocence to have
these clear and unsullied. He came into the world a
philosopher--"
("Instead of which he went and ate an apple.")
"He could see consequents yet dormant in their principles, and
effects yet unborn and in the womb of their causes."
("'Tis a pity, then, he took not the trouble to warn Eve.")
"His understanding could almost pierce to future contingencies.
. . ."
("Ay, 'almost.' The fellow begins to scent mischief, and thinks to
set himself right with a saving clause. Why 'almost'?" )
"his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or to certainties
of prediction. Till his fall he was ignorant of nothing but
sin; or, at least, it rested in the notion without the smart of
the experiment."
My father stamped the butt of his musket upon deck. "'Rested in the
notion,' did it? Nothing of the sort, sir! It rested in the apple,
which he was told not to eat; but, nevertheless, ate. Born a
philosopher, was he? And knew the effect of every cause without
knowing the difference between good and evil? Why, man, 'twas
precisely against becoming a philosopher that the Almighty took pains
to warn him!"
Mr. Badcock hastily turned a page.
"The image of God was no less resplendent in that which we call
man's practical understanding--namely, that storehouse of the
soul in which are treasured up the rules of action and the
seeds of morality. Now of this sort are these maxims: 'That
God is to be worshipped,' 'That parents are to be honoured,'
'That a man's word is to be kept.' It was the privilege of Adam
innocent to have these notions also firm and untainted--"
My father flung up both hands. "Oh! So Adam honoured his father and
his mother?"
"Belike," suggested Billy Priske, scratching his head, "Eve was
expecting, and he invented it to keep her spirits up."
"I assure you, sir," Mr. Badcock protested with dignity, "Dr. South
was the most admired preacher of his day. Her late Majesty offered
him the Deanery of Westminster."
"I could have found a better preferment for him, then; that of Select
Preacher to the Marines."
"If you will have patience, sir--"
"Prosper, how near is the leading boat?"
"A good mile away, sir, as yet."
"Then I will have patience, Mr. Badcock."
"The Doctor, sir, proceeds to make some observations on Love, with
which you will find yourself able to agree. Love, he says--
"'is the great instrument and engine of Nature, the bond and
cement of society; the spring and spirit of the universe. . . .
Now this affection in the state of innocence was happily
pitched upon its right object--'"
"'Happily,' did you say? 'Happily'? Why, good heavens, sir! how
many women had Adam to go gallivanting after? Enough, enough,
gentleman! To your guns! and in the strength of a faith which must
be strong indeed, to have survived its expositors!"
By this time, through our glasses, we could discern the faces of the
pirates, who, crowded in the bows and stern-sheets of the two leading
boats, weighted them almost to the water's edge. The third had
dropped, maybe half a mile behind in the race, but these two came on,
stroke for stroke, almost level--each measuring, at a guess, some
sixteen feet, and manned by eight rowers. They bore down straight
for our stern, until within a hundred yards; then separated, with the
evident intention of boarding us upon either quarter. At fifty yards
the musketeers in their bows opened fire, while my father whistled to
old Worthyvale, who, during Dr. South's sermon, had been bringing the
points of half a dozen handspikes to a red heat in the galley fire.
The two seamen, Nat and I, retorted with a volley, and Nat had the
satisfaction to drop the steersman of the boat making towards our
starboard quarter. Unluckily, as it seemed--for this was the boat on
which my father was training our 3-pounder--this threw her into
momentary confusion at a range at which he would not risk firing, and
allowed her mate to run in first and close with us. The confusion,
however, lasted but ten seconds at the most; a second steersman
stepped to the helm; and the boat came up with a rush and grated
alongside, less than half a minute behind her consort.
Now the _Gauntlet_, as the reader will remember, sailed in ballast,
and therefore carried herself pretty high in the water. Moreover,
our enemies ran in and grappled us just forward of her quarter, where
she carried a movable panel in her bulwarks to give access to an
accommodation ladder. While Nat, Captain Pomery, Mr. Fett, and the
two seamen ran to defend the other side, at a nod from my father I
thrust this panel open, leapt back, and Mr. Badcock aiding, ran the
little gun out, while my father depressed its muzzle over the boat.
In our excess of zeal we had nearly run her overboard; indeed, I
believe that overboard she would have gone had not my father applied
the red-hot iron in the nick of time. The explosion that followed
not only flung us staggering to right and left, but lifted her on its
recoil clean out of her rickety carriage, and kicked her back and
half-way across the deck.
Recovering myself, I gripped my musket and ran to the bulwarks.
A heave of the swell had lifted the boat up to receive our discharge,
which must have burst point-blank upon her bottom boards; for I
leaned over in bare time to see her settling down in a swirl beneath
the feet of her crew, who, after vainly grabbing for hold at the
_Gauntlet's_ sides, flung themselves forward and were swimming one
and all in a sea already discoloured for some yards with blood.
My father called to me to fire. I heard; but for the moment the
dusky upturned faces with their bared teeth fascinated me.
They looked up at me like faces of wild beasts, neither pleading nor
hating, and in response I merely stared.
A cry from the larboard bulwarks aroused me. Three Moors, all naked
to the waist, had actually gained the deck. A fourth, with a long
knife clenched between his teeth, stood steadying himself by the main
rigging in the act to leap; and in the act of turning I saw Captain
Pomery chop at his ankles with a cutlass and bring him down. We made
a rush on the others. One my father clubbed senseless with the butt
of his musket; another the two seamen turned and chased forward to
the bows, where he leapt overboard; the third, after hesitating an
instant, retreated, swung himself over the bulwarks, and dropped back
into the boat.
But a second cry from Mr. Fett warned us that more were coming.
Mr. Fett had caught up a sack of stones, and was staggering with it
to discharge it on our assailants when this fresh uprush brought him
to a check.
"That fellow has more head than I gave him credit for," panted my
father. "The gun, lad! Quick, the gun!"
We ran to where the gun lay, and lifted it between us, straining
under its weight; lurched with it to the side, heaved it up, and sent
it over into the second boat with a crash. Prompt on the crash came
a yell, and we stared in each other's faces, giddy with our triumph,
as John Worthyvale came tottering out of the cook's galley with two
fresh red-hot handspikes.
The third boat had come to a halt, less than seventy yards away.
A score of bobbing heads were swimming for her, the nearer ones
offering a fair mark for musketry. We held our fire, however, and
watched them. The boat took in a dozen or so, and then, being
dangerously overcrowded, left the rest to their fate, and headed back
for the xebec. The swimmers clearly hoped nothing from us.
They followed the boat, some of them for a long while. Through our
glasses we saw them sink one by one.