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"There's something gone aboard of him, but what it is I can't make out," exclaimed Lindsay, who was standing close beside me. "Ah!" he continued, "I see what it is now; it is her mainboom that we have shot away. I can see the outer end of it towing overboard. And see, she is paying off; with the loss of their after-sail they can no longer keep their luff!"
The night seemed preternaturally still, the silence which enveloped us being so profound that the noises of the ship the occasional heavy flap of her canvas, accompanied by a rain- like pattering of reef-points; the creak of the jaws of the mainboom or of the gaff overhead on the mast; the jerk of the mainsheet tautening out suddenly to the heave of the schooner; the kicking of the rudder, and the gurgling swirl of water about it and along the bends only served to emphasise while they broke in upon it with an irritating harshness altogether disproportionate to their volume.
We therefore piled upon the little hooker every rag that we could find a spar or stay for, brought her to the wind, flattened-in her sheets until her mainboom was almost amidships, and generally made all our preparations for a long chase to windward.
If any doubt remained as to the significance of our change of cruising-grounds, dawn dispelled it. View there was none from the deck of the Dulcibella; it was only by standing on the mainboom that you could see over the embankments to the vast plain of Holstein, grey and monotonous under a pall of mist.
When the sun that evening sank like a red ball behind the purple horizon, Dan laid aside various implements and went aft with the realization of a day well spent. He had cleared the deck. Using the mainboom and a goodly section of the tattered canvas he had improvised a capacious leg-of-mutton sail which flapped idly in the almost motionless air.
It was even as Lindsay had said; we had shot away the brigantine's mainboom, and thus rendered her big, powerful mainsail useless; so that, despite the lee helm that they were giving her, she was gradually falling off, until within a minute or two she was nearly dead before the wind.
With sheath-knife and sail-needle he made of his mainsail a handsome tent, using the mainboom for his ridge- pole, and finishing it just in time for the first night of rain when, nevertheless, he lost all his coffee! He did not waste toil.
"But then," he continued, "that ain't very surprisin' when you comes to think of it, for just listen to what's goin' on aboard here the old hooker ain't so very noisy, I'll allow; still, what with the rustlin' of the canvas overhead, the patter of the reef-points, the creakin' of the jaws o' the mainboom, the clank o' the wheel-chains, and the wash and gurgle of the water alongside with the roll of her, there's not much chance of pickin' up sounds comin' from a distance, is there, sir?"
Her decks are of narrow fir planks, without the least spring or rise; her ropes are of Manilla hemp, neatly secured to copper belaying-pins, and coiled down on the deck, whose whiteness is well contrasted with the bright green paint of her bulwarks; her capstern and binnacles are cased in fluted mahogany, and ornamented with brass; metal stanchions protect the skylights, and the bright muskets are arranged in front of the mainmast, while the boarding-pikes are lashed round the mainboom.
There is always a certain possibility of bringing a fore-and-aft rigged vessel's mainboom over when she is running hard, and this is rather apt to result in disaster to her spars. So fast was she travelling that the sea piled up in a big white wave beneath her quarter, and, cold as it was, the sweat of tense effort dripped from Wyllard as he forecasted what he had to do.
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