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Having called all hands, we close-reefed the topsails and trysail, furled the courses and jib, set the fore-topmast staysail, and brought her up nearly to her course, with the weather braces hauled in a little, to ease her. This was the first blow I had met, which could really be called a gale.
Then a dozen of them six forward and six aft leapt into the rigging, clambered it with the alacrity of squirrels, neatly furled the sails, and were on their way down again from aloft when the first gun from the Spaniard boomed out across the still waters of the channel, to be echoed a little later by the distant hills.
The starboard watch hauled aft the sheet, and the ship tore through the water like a mad horse, quivering and shaking at every joint, and dashing from her head the foam, which flew off at each blow, yards and yards to leeward. A half-hour of such sailing served our turn, when the clews of the sail were hauled up, the sail furled, and the ship, eased of her press, went more quietly on her way.
Marshall-Smith stopped, furled her parasol, and surveyed the scene within. Her sister-in-law, enveloped in a large blue apron, by no means fresh, sat beside a roughly built table, peeling tomatoes, her brown stained fingers moving with the rapidity of a prestidigitator's. Judith stood beside her, also attacking the pile of crimson fruit, endeavoring in vain to emulate her mother's speed.
When the sloop was at anchor, sails furled, and they were all waiting for mackerel bites, he said: "What is there so mysterious about this Pocket Island, and why are people afraid to go there? Tell me all about it! You have got me so worked up over it, I dreamed I heard a bull bellowing last night."
The anchor was dropped, and the sails furled for the night; a drizzling small rain came on, the weather was thick, and watches were stationed in every part of the ship, that they might not be surprised by the pirate proas, for the current ran past the ship at the rate of eight or nine miles per hour, and these vessels, if hid among the islands, might sweep down upon them unperceived.
I felt perhaps somethin' as our old 4 mothers did when they would see an angel standin' with furled wings outside their tents. I thought Josiah was asleep; but it seems he wuzn't, for he spoke out sort o' decided like, "Most probable it was the lamp." It was a lovely mornin' about three weeks after Cicely's death.
"Oh! it was a magnificent sight, as on we sailed, receiving a hot fire from the shore batteries, but not answering a shot, while silently we furled our sails, and got ready for anchoring. I believe that silence made the hearts of the Frenchmen quake more than our loudest hurrahs would have done. It was evening; the sun was just sinking into the ocean as we entered the bay.
Then we clewed up our courses, royals, and topgallantsails, and hauled down our flying jib and some of the lighter staysails, but furled nothing, leaving all in a state to be set again from the deck at a moment's notice.
Carefully sounding as she went, the shallop felt her way through the Cow Yard or Horse Market, around Beach Point, and having the flood tide with her rode triumphantly over Dick's Flat and Mother White's Guzzle, until finally, with furled sails and her head to the wind, she lay within a biscuit toss of the shore.
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