Fired a gun and weighed.

Sailed for the Fleet off Vigo, deucidly sea--sick was told that fat pork
was the best specific, if bolted half raw; did not find it much of a tonic
passed a terrible night, and for four hours of it obliged to keep watch,
more dead than alive. The very second evening we were at sea, it came on
to blow, and the night fell very dark, with heavy rain. Towards eight
bells in the middle watch, I was standing on a gun well forward on the
starboard side, listening to the groaning of the main--tack, as the
swelling sail, the foot of which stretched transversely right athwart the
ship's deck in a black arch, struggled to tear it up, like some dark
impalpable spirit of the air striving to burst the chains that held him,
and escape high up into the murky clouds, or a giant labouring to uproot
an oak, and wondering in my innocence how hempen cord could brook such
strain when just as the long waited--for strokes of the bell sounded
gladly in mine ear, and the shrill clear note of the whistle of the
boatswain's mate had been followed by his gruff voice, grumbling hoarsely
through the gale, "Larboard watch, ahoy!" The look--out at the weather
gangway, who had been relieved, and beside whom I had been standing a
moment before, stepped past me, and scrambled up on the booms "Hillo,
Howard, where away, my man?" said I.

"Only to fetch my"--

Crack!--the main tack parted, and up flew the sail with a thundering flap,
loud as the report of a cannon--shot, through which, however, I could
distinctly hear a heavy smash, as the large and ponderous blocks at the
clew of the sail struck the doomed sailor under the ear, and whirled him
off the booms over the fore--yard--arm into the sea, where he perished, as
heaving--to was impossible, and useless if practicable, as his head must