Like the big salmon of the literary fisherman, a sail is soon sighted, "A brave lusty ship of sixty guns. So much the better," says the writer, "for though we have but fifty, the enemy hath more goods in his hold, and it blows a brave chasing gale. Therefore let us set spritsails, spritsail-topsails, flying jib, and topgallants; and as we raise her apace we shall be up with her in three glasses" (half-hour glasses). It sounds strange in these days of monster ironclads to read that during a chase in a fifty-gun ship the crew were "ordered aft to remain quiet there, as the ship will steer better being too much by the head."
The enemy soon goes about, and is immediately followed by the young beginner. The chase "being a foul ship" (_i.e._ covered with weeds, barnacles, &c.), he gets to windward of her, and is advised to keep there, with "his enemy under his lee."
The gunner is now ordered "to see his guns all clear, and that nothing pester the decks." The hammocks being stowed round the bulwarks fore and aft in the nettings, the order is given to "down with all bulkheads" (cabin partitions, &c.) "that may hinder us or hurt with splinters;" and the gunner is asked, "whether there be good store of cartridges ready filled, and shot in the garlands" (racks for ball on deck) "between the guns and round the masts and hatches." He is also to see that "rammers, sponges, ladles, priming-irons, horns, linstocks, wads, swabs, and tubs of water, are all in place;" and that when engaged, "the guns be well loaded with crossbar and langrel" (old nails and bolts tied in bundles to cut an enemy's rigging), "and that the blunderbusses, musketoons, pistols, cutlashes, poleaxes, half-pikes, &c., are in readiness, and that the patereroes" (swivel guns) "and stock-fowlers in the round tops, have their chambers full of good powder, with bags of small shot" (bullets) "to load them, in order to clear the deck in case of the enemy boarding."
