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The 29th brought them into a very heavy squall which cost the Resolution a couple of staysails and her consort a main topmast and main topgallant yard, springing the head of her main-mast so badly that the rigging of a jury-mast was attended with some danger, but it was at length accomplished, a spare jibboom being furnished for the purpose by the Resolution.

"Then off!" shouted the "Boston's" skipper, and at the word down came his topgallant sheets, the yards going up at the same moment, and the royal sheets fluttering down into their berths, as the yards rose to meet them; then up went the royal yards to their respective mast-heads, the courses dropped heavily down, the staysails and flying-jib slid up their stays, and the driver was hauled out, the whole being done with the regularity and rapidity of a well-oiled and easy-working machine.

Adams and the hands forward, though, were busy getting ready the storm staysails I had seen the former cutting out some days previously so as to be prepared to hoist them on the first available opportunity, as it would never do to run too far off our course, which many hours going at that rate before the nor'-easter would soon have effected; and so, during a slight lull that occurred about breakfast-time, a mizzen staysail and foretopmast staysail, each about the size of a respectable pocket-handkerchief, were got aloft judiciously and the foresail as carefully handed, when the ship was brought round again head to wind and lay-to on the port tack.

The jibs and spanker generally go up at once, because they are useful as an aid to steering. The staysails generally wait. The jibs and staysails are triangular, the spanker a quadrangular fore-and-after. The square sails made fast to wide-spreading yards are the ones that take most hauling. But setting the sails by no means ends the work at them. Trimming is quite as important.

Now, therefore, on our succeeding in paying off so handsomely without any serious mishap, the Active scudding and running before the wind like a racehorse under her bare poles, so to speak, the scraps of storm staysails we carried being not worth taking into account, the eyes of every one were turned at once to windward to see what had become of the stranger vessel.

It was a large ship on a wind, and on the same tack as they were. In a gale in which no vessel could carry the topsails, the Vrow Katerina being under close-reefed foresails and staysails, the ship seen to leeward was standing under a press of sail top-gallant-sail, royals, flying-jib, and every stitch of canvas which could be set in a light breeze.

I noticed, though, Adams a little later on with a couple of men whom he requisitioned as sailmakers' mates busy cutting out queer little triangular pieces of canvas, which he told me were "storm staysails," the old ones having been blown away last voyage; while I saw that Tim Rooney, besides assuring himself of the security of the masts and setting up preventer stays for additional strength by the captain's orders, rigging up life- lines fore and aft, saying when I asked him what they were for, "To hould on wid, sure, whin we toombles into Cape weather, me darlint!"

On the foremast we had two squaresails; there ought to have been four. On the jib-boom there were two staysails; there was room enough for three, but the money would not run to it. In the Trades we tried to make up for the deficiency by rigging a studding-sail alongside the foresail and a sky-sail above the topsail.

She immediately shot into the wind, all aback, and it took them fully five minutes to box her off again, when seeing, I suppose, that they could not now possibly escape us her people clewed up her courses, hauled down topgallant sails and staysails, until they had reduced their canvas to what it had been when we first sighted her, hoisted French colours, and bore up for us.

By the time the Industry had got out into Boston Bay she had set her mainsail and her foresail, and her maintopsail and her foretopsail, and her maintopgallantsail and her foretopgallantsail, and her mainroyal and her foreroyal, and her mainskysail and her foreskysail, and all of her jibs and her spanker and her staysails; and the sailors were busy getting out her studdingsail booms.