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Double gaskets were passed round the yards, rolling tackles and other gear bowsed taut, and everything made as secure as it could be. Coming down, we found the rest of the crew just coming down the fore rigging, having furled the tattered topsail, or, rather, swathed it round the yard, which looked like a broken limb, bandaged.
She's a Baltimore boat; goin' in fear an' tremblin'," said Dan. "We'll guy the very sticks out of her. Guess it's the fust time her skipper ever met up with the Fleet this way." She was a black, buxom, eight-hundred-ton craft. Her mainsail was looped up, and her topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind was moving.
It had to remain as it was, however, for the present, the commander not wishing to peril the men's lives needlessly by sending them aloft unless it was absolutely necessary for the safety of the ship; for it was not any easy thing to shift such a big spar as the topsail yard in a gale of wind.
You have sharp eyes, George, and no mistake," answered the skipper. "Yes, there certainly is something there; and, as you say, it looks uncommonly like a lugger! Well, she is a good two miles off. We shall have time to run the big fellow aboard and take her before that lugger is near enough to trouble us. Stand by, there, some of you, to jump aloft and loose the topsail when I give the word.
In the interval, the difference between the dew point and temperature had increased from 7.5 to 17 degrees. On another occasion I started early and walked to the Gavia, or topsail mountain. The air was delightfully cool and fragrant; and the drops of dew still glittered on the leaves of the large liliaceous plants, which shaded the streamlets of clear water.
While these lucky beggars, as I then thought them, were footing it up the ratlines, the commander sang out in rapid rotation, the orders necessary to make the way clear for taking in the reef required "Weather topsail braces round in lower the tops'ls!" "Trice up and lay out!"
Grief watched the Willi-Waw haul up close, go out the passage, then slack its sheets as it headed south with the wind abeam. As it went out of sight past the point he could see the topsail being broken out. One of the Gooma boys, a black, nearly fifty years of age, hideously marred and scarred by skin diseases and old wounds, looked up into his face and grinned.
There was none of the doldrums that trip, dodged 'em fair an' square; a topsail breeze to the Cape, and then the fust of the monsoon to the Hugli. We lay maybe a couple of months at Calcutta, when what should I do but take aboard a full dose of the cramp, just as the Swallow was in a manner of speakin' on the wing.
Reefing a topsail in a gale is an evolution simple in itself; and when the sail is placed by the skill of the officer of the deck in a proper condition, the work aloft can be accomplished in five minutes, even by a bungling crew.
They expect to stop there to get provisions for the cruise, for there was but little here that they could take with them. They wanted to get there before dark, and I don't doubt but that, with this wind, they'll do it. If you'll step to this end of the piazza, sir, perhaps you can see their topsail. I saw it just before you came, as they were beginning to make the long tack."
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