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Nobody spoke. On deck the men were sheeting home the skysails. George Dorety could hear their cries, while a persistent vision haunted him of a man called Mops, alive and well, clinging to a life-buoy miles astern in that lonely ocean. He glanced at Captain Cullen, and experienced a feeling of nausea, for the man was eating his food with relish, almost bolting it.
These trades were the same that in the passage out in the Pilgrim lasted nearly all the way from Juan Fernandez to the line; blowing steadily on our starboard quarter for three weeks, without our starting a brace, or even brailing down the skysails.
In this assertion, however, Captain Blyth proved to be reckoning without his host; for as the morning wore on the breeze freshened considerably, obliging him to clew up and furl his skysails one after the other, and then his royals, which seemed to give the leading ship an advantage.
With the change of wind came a change of weather, and in two hours the wind moderated into the light steady breeze, which blows down the coast the greater part of the year, and, from its regularity, might be called a trade-wind. The sun came up bright, and we set royals, skysails and studding-sails, and were under fair way for Santa Barbara.
The man at the wheel altered the course, while both watches sprang aloft to shake out royals and skysails. And yet Captain West knew every inch of the risk he took in this graveyard of ships. When we entered the narrow strait, under full sail and gripped by a tremendous tide, the rugged headlands of Tierra del Fuego dashed by with dizzying swiftness.
The wind continued slowly but steadily to haul round from the northward, and by nine o'clock in the evening of the fifth day out the good ship, with a breeze at about due north and fresh enough to necessitate the stowing of all three skysails, was off Cape Finisterre and bowling along upon her course with studding, sails, from the royals down, set to windward, and reeling off her knots in a manner which caused the mates to stare incredulously at the line every time they hove the log.
The cold, fresh breeze soon cleared Rogers's head of its aches and throbs, and he took stock of the ship and her people. She seemed to be about twelve hundred tons' register, with no skysails, stunsails, or other kites to make work for her crew, an easy ship, as far as wind and weather were concerned.
For several minutes they remained thus side by side. The Lolotte was now well at sea, the wind and waves rising rapidly, the motion already considerable. Presently there was an order of "Lay aloft and furl the skysails," and then short shouts resounded from the darkness, showing that the work was being done.
The tar sat as one in a trance, but by certain gesticulations, it appeared that his skysails were not so shattered that he did not comprehend the drift of the question, and after much tugging and pulling at an old waistcoat, which was worn beneath the round-about, he produced a roll, which, from twenty years' wear, it having been his constant companion during that time, by sea and by land, had become in appearance of an uncertain nature, and handing it to the gentleman, he said, after examining the miniature which Natalie put into his hand, of her mother, "The document belongs to her, and if I'd a happened to have met her on the sea, I might have known it, even If I hadn't seen the picture of the noble lady, for she's the exact imitation; but I never can get the land fog out of my eyes when I'm ashore.
We had an advantage over her in light winds, from our royals and skysails which we carried both at the fore and main, and also from our studding-sails; for Captain Wilson carried nothing above top-gallant-sails, and always unbent his studding-sails when on the coast.
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