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"I can take three," I answered. "Make it four," he suggested, "and I'll take Bill with me." The exchange was made, and the salmon boat got up its spritsail and headed down the bay toward the marshes off San Rafael. I ran up the jib and followed with the Reindeer.
We sailed all night, and next morning, on the first of a glorious flood-tide, a fair wind behind us, we came booming up the Carquinez Straits to Port Costa. There lay the stolen boat, not twenty-five feet from the wharf. We ran alongside and doused our little spritsail. I sent Nickey forward to lift the anchor, while I began casting off the gaskets. A man ran out on the wharf and hailed us.
The second mate swore at them for a parcel of ``sogers, and sent up a couple of the best men; but they could do no better, and the gaff was lowered down. All hands were now employed in setting up the lee rigging, fishing the spritsail yard, lashing the galley, and getting tackles upon the martingale, to bowse it to windward.
The Spaniards rallied, and fought with renewed courage, and it was now, not for glory, but for dear life, as all retreat was cut off by the parting of the grapplings and warps, that had lashed the schooner alongside of the slaver, for the Wave had by this time forged a head, and lay across the brig's bows, in place of being on her quarter, with her foremast jammed against the slaver's bowsprit, whose spritsail yard crossed our deck between the masts.
While he is darting and playing around the vessel a sailor goes out to the spritsail yard-arm, and with a long staff, leaded at one end, and armed at the other with five barbed spikes, he heaves it at him. If successful in his aim there is a fresh mess for all hands. The dying dolphin affords a superb and brilliant sight: Mille trahit moriens, adverse sole colores.
I could just make out through the gloom that the boat was no longer in her place, and presently I saw several figures carrying some bags go forward and disappear from the spritsail yard. I knew, therefore, that the men I had seen intended to run away, and that they were probably some of the fellows whose complaints I had overheard. In vain I struggled to get free that I might give the alarm.
I now perfectly understood that he had been caught and spritsail yarded, as the seamen term it, and then turned adrift for their diversion. The buoyancy of the spar prevents the animal from sinking down under the water, and this punishment of their dreaded enemy is a very favourite amusement of sailors.
My companion on the yard was a lad, who came out in the ship a weak, puny boy, from one of the Boston schools, "no larger than a spritsail sheet knot," nor "heavier than a paper of lamp-black," and "not strong enough to haul a shad off a gridiron," but who was now "as long as a spare topmast, strong enough to knock down an ox, and hearty enough to eat him."
There was a large hogshead with two or three small barrels upon the raft; and around its edge were lashed several empty casks, serving as buoys to keep it above water. A single spar stood up out of its centre, or "midships," to which was rigged in a very slovenly manner a large lateen sail, either the spanker or spritsail of a ship, or the mizzen topsail of a bark.
All day the air had been calm; if anything, the breeze was from the north, but now a strong wind was coming up from the south-east, freshening every moment, and bringing with it a pent bank of dark clouds; and, as they watched, the mysterious black speck was topped with white, and soon they saw that it was indeed a boat driving before the wind under a spritsail, which had just been set.
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