The conflict was terrible. Sukey was stationed on the gun deck, abreast
the mainmast. This part of the ship they called the slaughter-house, for
men fell five and six at a time. An enemy nearly always directs his shot
at this point in order to cut away the mast. The beams and carlines were
spattered with blood and brains. About the hatchways it looked like a
butcher's stall; bits of human flesh were sticking in the ring-bolts. A
pig that ran about the deck, though unharmed, was so covered with blood,
that the sailors threw it overboard, swearing it would be rank
cannibalism to eat it. A goat, kept on board for her milk, had her legs
shot away, and was thrown into the sea.
The sailors who were killed were, according to the usual custom, ordered
to be thrown overboard as soon as they fell; for the sight of so many
corpses lying around might appall the survivors at the guns. A shot
entering one of the portholes cut down two-thirds of a gun's crew. The
captain of the next gun, dropping his lock string, which he had just
pulled, turned over the heap of bodies to see who they were; when,
perceiving an old messmate, who had sailed with him in many cruises, he
burst into tears, and, taking the corpse up in his arms and going with
it to the side, he held it over the water a moment, gazed on the silent
pale face and cried:
"Oh, God! Tom--Tom, has it come to this at last----"
"D--n your prayers! over with that thing! overboard with it and down to
your gun!" roared a wounded lieutenant.
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