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The main-trysail was hoisted as successfully. Small as were the sails, and slight the angle with the wind, the pressure brought the ship down nearly to her covering-board. Wilkinson and the boatswain took their places by the wheel. "Keep her full, lads, but not a bit more. She will do at that. By Jove, Blagrove," he said, as Edgar came aft and glanced at the compass, "that was a narrow squeak!
The breeze was then blowing rather fresh at about east by north, the Foam thrashing along with her lee covering-board awash, her royal stowed, and her topmasts whipping about like a couple of fishing- rods; whilst the felucca was about three miles ahead of us and broad on our weather bow, going two feet to our one, and weathering on us at every plunge.
She was planked right up to her covering-board, and while one strong gang of workmen was busy fitting her bulwarks, another gang, upon stages, was hard at work caulking her, a third gang under her bottom, having apparently just commenced the operation of coppering.
Another mountain of water came brimming over the deck of the shuddering craft and shifted the raft so far that it fairly overhung the covering-board, so that when the felucca rolled in the opposite direction the end of the raft not only dipped in the water but actually lifted and floated, the heave of the water sucking it perhaps another foot off the deck.
They averaged six complete strakes of planking three on either side of the hull sawn, trimmed, steamed, and fixed, per diem; and as there happened to be thirty strakes up to the covering-board it cost them just ten days of strenuous labour to get the inner skin laid; and the laying of the outer skin consumed a similar period.
With the setting of the sun there came a still further freshening of the breeze, laying the barque down upon her side until her lee covering-board was buried, and the water, spouting up through the scuppers, was washing the deck on the lee-side almost up to the coamings of the main-hatchway.
By dinner-time I succeeded in finishing the painting, giving the craft not only a coat of black from her rail down to the copper, with a white stripe or ribbon round the ornamental groove cut for that purpose in the covering-board, but also a coat of pale stone-colour all round the inside of her low bulwarks, as well as a touch of varnish on the teak and mahogany-fittings of the deck.
Only one or two could we recognise, for the poor fellows' heads had been battered out of all human semblance by blows from the heavy native clubs, and from their still warm bodies ran a dreadful stream of red that flooded the quarter-deck and poured along the covering-board to the deck below.
She was submerged almost to her covering-board, and the whole of her bulwarks being gone between her topgallant forecastle and long full poop, the sea was making a clean breach right over her main deck, leaving little to be seen above water but a short length of her bows and about three times as much of her stern.
But our progress was so slow that at noon the derelict was still hull-up to the southward, sunk to the level of her covering-board; and when, after dinner, I returned to the poop and took the glass to search for her, she was nowhere to be seen, although, had she still been afloat, her spars and canvas at least should have been visible above the horizon.
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