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From this moment it lies with you to furl or spread my sails, that they hang not slack and drooping nor be reefed and brailed. So all editions before Van der Vliet. I will try to apply the saying of Aristippus. Aristippus was the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy and was a disciple of Socrates a fact which he regarded as the greater honour of the two.
"Oh, that's easily managed; we have only to brail and furl up a little, to hide our cloth from the Ingians, and then send the boats a-head to tow the craft, while some of us lend a hand at her own sweeps. We shall get close under the lee of the land afore night, and then we must pull up agin along shore, until we get within a mile or so of the head of the river."
In two hours more, tap, tap, came Bayliss, in charge. "If we don't take sail in, they'll take themselves out." "Furl to-gallen'sels, and call me if it gets any worse." In another hour Bayliss was at him again. "Blowing a gale, sir, and a Channel fog on." "Reef taupsles, and call me if it gets any worse."
Now large eyes began to show themselves in the foresail; and knowing that it must soon go, the mate ordered us upon the yard to furl it.
Captain Vavassour immediately issued the necessary orders; the clew-garnets, buntlines, and leech-lines were manned at the moment that the ship was running off the wind, the tack and sheet were eased up, and the great sail, the most powerful in the ship, was handsomely clewed up, as the men appointed to furl it made their way aloft.
Our watch had been so reduced by sickness, and by some having been left in California, that, with one man at the wheel, we had only the third mate and three beside myself to go aloft; so that at most we could only attempt to furl one yard-arm at a time. We manned the weather yard-arm, and set to work to make a furl of it.
The moment the men were in the rigging, going aloft to furl the sails, C put his plan into execution. He turned his craft head to wind, and steamed deliberately past the corvette at not fifty yards' distance. She, with great way on, went nearly a quarter of a mile before she could turn.
Hands were sent aloft to furl the foretopsail; and he then directed that the boats on the starboard side should be brought over, so as to be launched into the smoother water under our lee where, on sounding, we found that there was sufficient depth to float them without risk of their striking the coral below.
The people of the "Dolphin" had so far imitated the confiding credulity of the deceived cruiser of the Crown, as to furl all their loftiest duck, each man employed in the service trusting implicitly to the discretion and daring of the singular being whose pleasure it was to bring their ship into so hazardous a proximity to a powerful enemy qualities that had been known to avail them in circumstances of even greater delicacy than those in which they were now placed.
It was my duty to furl the fore royal; and while standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them.
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