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This, however, was a matter that would have to wait; he had something of an even more pressing nature that called for his immediate attention. By the time that the catamaran had arrived alongside the cutter, the latter's anchor was down and the jib and foresail taken in.
Paul was waiting for a favorable moment, when the blast should lull a little, to set the reefed foresail. "You must get out of the way, gentlemen!" said Terrill, roaring out the words through his trumpet. "The sheet blocks will knock you over!" Mr.
Accordingly, before relieving Bob at the tiller, I roused out our spinnaker again; and as we had hauled up a couple of points for Beachy Head just as I came on deck, I got it to the bowsprit-end and set it, with its sheet led aft to the main-boom-end, in place of the jib, which, with the foresail, I stowed.
Once when the Phoenix gave a weather roll that wetted the foresail to the yard-arm, he said, "My poor Susan!" with a pitying accent, not a quavering one. But most of the time he was busy crawling on all-fours from one sufferer to another with a drop of brandy in a phial. The wind emptied a glass of the very moisture let alone the liquid in a moment.
Another went through her foresail, close to the mast. "A foot more, and you would have cut his foremast asunder." The vessel to leeward had been struck by only one shot, the other passing under her stern. She was struck just above her deck line, the shot passing through the bulwark, and, as they thought on board the merchantman, narrowly missing if not actually striking the mainmast.
Close-reefing the foresail, we got it ready to hoist as a square sail; the rest of the spars we lashed fore and aft on either side, while we cut up the mainsail and raised the gunwale a foot or more all round to help keep out the water. We also, as far as we could, covered in the after-part of the little craft. While we were thus engaged the boys were pumping and baling.
"All ready, sir," came the reply, scarcely audible above the roar of the tempest that was now close upon us; and as the man spoke a fierce gust of wind laden with salt mist swooped down upon us and careened the schooner almost to her covering-board as it filled the foresail with a jar and a report like that of a nine-pounder.
Yes and the consequential Ugly was occupying a comfortable seat right under the jib, and only turned his head the least bit when he heard the Captain's mention of him. "Keep her full now, Walter, ready to go about. Let go the jib-sheet, Bob; and now, down with your helm, Walter!" The mainsail flapped twice. By that time the foresail had filled on the other tack.
Nothing is more impressive to the unaccustomed mind than the spars and canvas of a ship under full sail seen from the deck, nothing more suggestive of power and the daring of man than the sight of those leviathan spars and vast sail spaces rising dizzily from main and foresail in pyramids to where the truck works like a pencil point writing on the sky.
By eight in the morning the wreck was cleared, and the ship got before the wind, in which position she was kept two hours. Meantime the pumps reduced the water in the hold two feet, and the ship's head was brought to the eastward with the foresail only.
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