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Like tumbling dolphins they were seiners all, with a single boat towing astern and a single dory, or sometimes two dories, lashed in the waist, all gear stowed away, under four lower sails mostly jumbo, jib, fore and main, though now and then was one with a mainsail in stops and a trysail laced to the gaff, and all laying down to it until their rails were washing under and the sea hissed over the bows.
Salvé had the middle watch; and by that time the sea was running high, and they were plunging through the darkness under a double-reefed mainsail, the moon every now and then clearing an open space in the storm clouds that were driving like smoke before it, so that he could fitfully distinguish objects over the deck, even to the look-out man's looming figure out upon the forecastle.
But when at last she drew fully abreast the two men sheeted mainsail and jib flat while the white-headed helmsman threw her over so that the yacht drove in on the sloop and the two younger men grappled MacRae's coaming with boat hooks, and side by side they came slowly up into the wind. MacRae made no move, said nothing, only regarded the three with sober intensity.
'God bless my soul! said he, wiping his brow with a huge coloured handkerchief as big as a mainsail, 'one night in such a furnace as that would have brought on the gout. He had dined in town, and by the time that his chamber had been stripped of its appendages, he was nearly ready for bed. Before he did so, he was asked to take a glass of sherry.
We took our mainsail, which was hard frozen, and carried it ashore to cover our house, first thawing it by a great fire; by night they had covered it, and had almost hedged it about, and our six builders desired they might travel up into the country to see what they could discover. Oct. 15.
It did not alter the Snark's course a tenth of a degree. We slacked the mainsail off with no more result. We set a storm trysail on the mizzen, and took in the mainsail. No change. The Snark roiled on in the trough. That beautiful bow of hers refused to come up and face the wind. Next we took in the reefed staysail. Thus, the only bit of canvas left on her was the storm trysail on the mizzen.
The relative dimensions of the boat would be governed to a considerable extent by her rig. A cutter-rigged craft is more powerful than any other, but it is open to the objection that the mainsail the cutter's most important sail is an awkward sail to handle in a sudden emergency, if the craft happens to be short-handed, as we should be.
To be precise, the wind is north-east; the Snark's mizzen is furled, her mainsail is over to starboard, her head-sheets are hauled flat: and the Snark's course is south-south-west. And yet there are men who have sailed the seas for forty years and who hold that no boat can run before it without being steered.
Spike tacked his vessel himself now, and got her head up so high that she brought the steamer on her lee quarter, and looked away toward the island which lies northwardly from the Point, and quite near to which all vessels of any draught of water are compelled to pass, even with the fairest winds. "Shake the reef out of the mainsail, Mr.
Then the shrieking gale dropped suddenly and the gusts of rain ceased. I leaped up at once to unfurl the jib. With a little canvas on her I believed the sloop could be wore 'round and headed into the wind before the waves sprang up. Perhaps it would have been wiser to have given her a hand's breath of the mainsail.
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