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She scudded across Boston deeps under two close-reefed topsails and reefed foresail until abreast of Cromer high land, when the gale subsided, and before the Cockle light-ship was reached the wind had shifted into the south-south-east.
"I don't much like that young man," said his lordship to his toady, who followed him up and down the quarter-deck like "the bobtail cur," looking his master in the face. I did not hear the answer, but of course it was an echo. The first time we reefed topsails at sea, the captain was on deck: he said nothing, but merely looked on.
When the dawn broke we saw the smoke of a steamer, and agreed that it was her light we had seen; but I made nothing of that smoke, and was looking heartbrokenly at the mizzenmast and the cluster of drowned men washing about it, when a loud cry made me turn my head, and then I saw a lifeboat under a reefed foresail heading direct for us.
Both kinds have a double tier of rowers, and both are guided by two steering oars thrust out from the stern; but while the one is still without mast or sail, and is rounded off in exactly the same way both at stem and stern, the other has a mast, placed about midship, a yard hung across it, and a sail close reefed to the yard, while the bow is armed with a long projecting beak, like a ploughshare, which must have been capable of doing terrible damage to a hostile vessel.
At last, one afternoon, it began to rain, and after the rain came a gale from the eastward. The watchful skipper saw it purple the water to windward, and ordered the topsails to be reefed and the lee ports closed. This last order seemed an excess of precaution; but Dodd was not yet thoroughly acquainted with his ship's qualities: and the hard cash round his neck made him cautious.
The Curlew, under a single reefed fore and mainsail and a single jib, was gracefully rising and falling to the rhythmic motion of long and ponderous waves. The unaccustomed roll bewildered the lad from the mountains, the singing of the wind through the shrouds buzzed strangely in his ears. He made a dive for the cook's galley, where Neb was dishing up the cabin meal.
My sloop on this course ran under reefed sails for days together. I naturally tired of the never-ending motion of the sea, and, above all, of the wetting I got whenever I showed myself on deck.
This was the first blow, that I had seen, which could really be called a gale. We had reefed our topsails in the Gulf Stream, and I thought it something serious, but an older sailor would have thought nothing of it. As I had now become used to the vessel and to my duty, I was of some service on a yard, and could knot my reef-point as well as anybody.
Then she noticed the mosquito net reefed up on a hoop above the bunk, and managed to get the curtain down so that he should be protected from the assaults of insects. But as she touched him in doing this, he stirred and muttered wrathfully in his sleep, as though he were conscious of her tenderness and would have none of it; she fled away and came to him no more.
We were now in latitude 44° 29' south, by account, and longitude 144° 30' east, being so near Van Diemen's Land, and so well to the southward as I supposed we were, I had no doubt of being able to cross it, and, availing myself of this southerly wind, to run along the coast to the northward, and reach Port Jackson in a few days; but as we drew near the meridian of the south cape, the gale increased to a mere tempest, attended with thick hazy weather, and a most astonishing high sea; this brought us under a reefed fore-sail, balanced mizzen, and the three storm stay-sails.
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