The Surgeon's Apprentice - John Biggins

we perceived that they were more disordered now and
worse-aimed than those they had red at the Basilisk, so
that one knocked out a piece of the fret beneath our
beakhead and another hit the side well aft, while another
aimed too high tore a rent in the mizzen sail and passed on
with a great roaring noise, but most of their bullets merely
splashed in the water about us. For myself, standing there
beside our skipper, it was as Mister Neades had predicted a
most disagreeable reection at rst that the bullet that had
just ripped through the sail twenty feet above my head
would infallibly, if aimed a half-degree or so lower, have
knocked me all to bloody gobbets; and myself a surgeon’s
mate withal, with no more mortal weapon about my person
than a eam in my pocket for letting blood. But as Mister
Neades had likewise predicted, the sensation quickly
passed, and it seemed before long quite normal to me and
perfectly comprehensible that those unseen rascals in the
fort over there should be seeking to kill me though I had
never offered them the smallest offence. And throughout all
this din and peril our English bowmen stood like so many
statues in the waist, never inching even when shot whizzed
overhead, until I think that their rheumaticky old calves
must have grown tired with the standing.
Our starboard battery discharged and we having
received (we ascertained) but small hurt in return, we sailed
on past Puntal as our gunners reloaded, then ran the
starboard guns in and shut and barred the port-lids since to
have more gunports than necessary open during an action is
always hazardous. About ten cables beyond the fort, as the
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