United States or Isle of Man ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The fore-top-sail, close-reefed as it was, had blown out of the bolt-ropes, and the shreds fluttered in streamers from the yards. Away it flew, lashing the yard with fury, and coiling itself into thick twists of rope. The wind unfortunately caught the bow, and bringing her right round, exposed her broadside to the sea.
They have known what it is to be short of victuals five hundred miles from land with contrary winds; they have experienced the delights of a summer at New Orleans, waiting for a cargo and being eaten alive by mosquitoes; they have looked up, in January, at the ice-sheeted rigging, when boiling water froze upon the shrouds and ratlines, and the captain said that no man could lay out upon the top-sail yard, though the north-easter threatened to blow the sail out of the bolt-ropes but Ruggiero got hold of the lee earing all the same and Sebastiano followed him, and the captain swore a strange oath in the Italo-American language, and went aloft himself to help light the sail out to windward, being still a young man and not liking to be beaten by a couple of beardless boys, as the two were then.
The result of this manoeuvre was that, when the gale struck the Aurora, her main-topsail, which was a-shiver, was blown clean out of the bolt-ropes in an instant, as also was the foresail and the partially-stowed main-sail; whilst the fore-topsail was strongly filled at once, and being luckily a new sail, and standing the strain upon it bravely, it quickly began to drag the ship through the water.
The squall blew fiercer and fiercer, the rain poured heavier and heavier. Where was the Spaniard? "If he has laid-to, we may overshoot him, sir!" "If he has tried to lay-to, he will not have a sail left in the bolt-ropes, or perhaps a mast on deck. I know the stiff-neckedness of those Spanish tubs. Hurrah! there he is, right on our larboard bow!"
"Ah!" exclaimed Ryan, admiringly, "that fellow is no fool; he scents danger ahead; he has been in a cyclone before to-day, I'll warrant, and seems to know exactly what he is about. There goes his topsail, clean out of the bolt-ropes, as I expected it would; but I do not suppose he ever seriously hoped to save the sail.
I trembled as I saw the third mate, with several other men, taking in the jib. Having let go the halliards, and eased off the sheets, hauling away on the down-hauler; and having got it down on the bowsprit-cap, though nearly blown out of the bolt-ropes, stowing it away in the foretopmast staysail-netting.
The canvas was carried clean from the bolt-ropes, the sheets were let go, and the lighter sails clewed up, and an attempt made to get the ship's head to the wind and lay her to. But the mizzen-sails were all gone, and she fell off, and refused to obey her helm.
Over she heeled before it, the fore-staysail with a loud report flew out of the bolt-ropes ere it had done its duty of paying off the ship's head. Again and again the savage blast struck her side, pressing her still farther down, while the ever-increasing seas broke in foaming masses over her. The captain gave the order to cut away the mizzen-mast, and set another staysail.
The hurricane for such it was blew with appalling violence for exactly twelve hours, during which the Nonsuch scudded dead before it under close-reefed topsails, with the canvas straining and tugging until opinion became divided as to whether the cloth would part company with the bolt-ropes, or whether, being new and strong, it would uproot the masts and drag them bodily out of the ship, especially when the crest of a sea swept roaring and foaming away ahead of her, and her way was checked as she settled back into the trough.
I thought for a moment that she, too, was going to turn turtle with us, and I believe she would, had the staysail stood; but luckily at the very moment when it seemed all up with us, the sheet parted with a report that sounded even above the yell of the gale; there was a concussion as though the ship had struck something solid, and with a single flap the sail split in ribbons and blew clean out of the bolt-ropes.
Word Of The Day