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The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like a switch.
"An excellent suggestion, for which I am much obliged to you, Mr Bowen!" exclaimed the skipper, interrupting me. "It shall be tried at once." And he forthwith gave the necessary orders. A main-topgallant-sail was got up out of the sail-room and dropped overboard, made fast by a line to one of the clews.
"All went well with us until the day before last, when, just before eight bells in the afternoon watch, one of the hands, who had gone aloft to stow the main-topgallant-sail, reported a sail dead to leeward of us under a heavy press of canvas.
Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the whaler, and though she was no beauty, yet, I tell you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had ever beheld as she lay with her main-topgallant-sail clewed up, her topsail yards on the caps, and the heads of men knotting the reef-points showing black over the white cloths, her hull floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea darkling from her into the east.
The spread of canvas was then further reduced by the hauling down of the main-topgallant-staysail, and the furling of the fore-topgallant-sail; and finally the flying-jib and main-topgallant-sail were stowed, after which the two craft appeared to maintain, as nearly as possible, an equal speed all through the remainder of the night.
For some hours the brig made fair progress, but as the evening drew on the wind again got up. The captain had gone below. He could not resist taking a pull at the rum bottle. We were carrying topsails and topgallantsails. A sudden squall laid the brig over. The captain sprang on deck and shouted "All hands shorten sail! You, Peter and Jim, up aloft with you and hand the main-topgallant-sail."
As I did so, the helmsman, with his eye on the weather leach of the main-topgallant-sail, said: "Don't look at me, or take any notice of me, sir, because I don't want them skowbanks for'ard to see me a-talkin' to you; but I've got somethin' very partic'lar as I should like to s'y, if I can only find a chaunce." "Well, fire away then, my lad," said I. "No time like the present.
Be that as it may, we had just made it noon when the quarter-master called our attention to the fact that the barque's people had loosed their main-topgallant-sail and were sheeting it home over the double-reefed topsail. It was an imprudent thing to do, however, for the sail had scarcely been set ten minutes when the topgallant-mast went over the side, snapped short off by the cap.
And, as usual, he hid nothing from his hearers. Then he hove to, and, as it were, climbed to the main-topgallant-sail in order to announce: "O Love!" It was not surprising that his voice cracked. Emanuel ought to have been the last person to be surprised at such a phenomenon. But he was surprised. To him the phenomenon of that cracking was sempiternally novel and astounding.
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