Suddenly, with a swirl of beaten water, a huge vessel loomed out of the mist, her flying jibboom seeming to project right over our stern. Our master and one of the seamen flung themselves on the tiller and put it hard down.  The shallop ran up into the wind and lost way, and as she did so the man-of-war thrashed by us so near that we could see the gunports of her lofty tumble-home sides, though her spars and sails were lost in the mist.