Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

146 THE PIAZZA TALES
quarters, at a suitable distance laying upon their oars
to discharge their muskets. Having no bullets to return,
the negroes sent their yells. But, upon the second
volley, Indian-like, they hurtled their hatchets. One
took off a sailor's fingers. Another struck the whale-
boat's bow, cutting off the rope there, and remaining
stuck in the gunwale like a woodman's axe. Snatching
it, quivering from its lodgment, the mate hurled it back.
The returned gauntlet now stuck in the ship's broken
quarter-gallery, and so remained.
The negroes giving too hot a reception, the whites
kept a more respectful distance. Hovering now just
out of reach of the hurtling hatchets, they, with a view
to the close encounter which must soon come, sought
to decoy the blacks into entirely disarming themselves
of their most murderous weapons in a hand-to-hand
fight, by foolishly flinging them, as missiles, short of the
mark, into the sea. But, ere long, perceiving the
stratagem, the negroes desisted, though not before many
of them had to replace their lost hatchets with hand-
spikes ; an exchange which, as counted upon, proved,
in the end, favourable to the assailants.
Meantime, with a strong wind, the ship still clove the
water ;
the boats alternately falling behind, and pulling
up, to discharge fresh volleys.
The fire was mostly directed toward the stern, since
there, chiefly, the negroes, at present, were clustering.
But to kill or maim the negroes was not the object.
To take them, with the ship, was the object. To do it,
the ship must be boarded ; which could not be done
by boats while she was sailing so fast.
A thought now struck the mate. Observing the
Spanish boys still aloft, high as they could get, he called
to them to descend to the yards, and cut adrift the
sails. It was done. About this time, owing
to causes