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She had lost her fore and main topgallant masts, and her port bulwarks were stove in. The quarter boat was missing and her jolly boat was gone. She came along at the rate of about two knots, under close-reefed topsails, storm trysails, and spanker. We could hear Captain Gordon's voice directing the working of the ship, and once I saw him on the quarterdeck, leaning over the rail to watch us.
A succession of gales from various points of the compass now prevailed with more or less violence for seven or eight days, during a great portion of which the Alabama was lying to, in a heavy sea under close-reefed maintopsail and reefed trysails.
"We shall have it all back again, I am afraid, sir," observed the master, looking to windward at the horizon, which, black as pitch, served as a background to relieve the white curling tops of the seas. "Shall we have the trysails up, and bend them?" "The boatswain is down after them now, Pearce," said the first-lieutenant.
"We must get trysails on the main and foremast," Wilkinson went on, "and manage to lay her course a couple of points to the west. I wish we had those upper spars down on deck, but it is of no use talking of that now." Wilkinson went down to the sail-room with the boatswain and four seamen to bring up the two heaviest and strongest of the triangular sails.
The rest retreated for'ard on the dead run, while the three trysails, furled at the foot of the stays next to the mizzen and set on fire by the dripping gasolene, went up in flame and burned entirely away and out without setting the rest of the ship on fire. That is one of the virtues of a ship steel-masted and steel-stayed.
On the conning-tower was rigged a little bridge of slim brass stanchions and thin wire-rope rail, with the canvas as high as a man's chin for protection; and away she went in a wind that was still blowing hard enough to drive home-bound Gloucester fishermen down to storm trysails and sea enough to jump an out-bound destroyer of a thousand tons under easy steam to her lower plates whenever she lifted forward.
The sea was still running high, but there was no sound of water breaking over the bulwarks. He emerged from his deck-cabin, and took a sniff of the morning air. A reef had been shaken out of the trysails, and the fore-topsail and jib were set. He went aft, and found the mate just heaving the patent log.
The Nan-Shan was being looted by the storm with a senseless, destructive fury: trysails torn out of the extra gaskets, double-lashed awnings blown away, bridge swept clean, weather-cloths burst, rails twisted, light-screens smashed and two of the boats had gone already. They had gone unheard and unseen, melting, as it were, in the shock and smother of the wave.
Four trysails yes, you might call 'em trysails was our Admiralty allowance in the un'eard of event of a cruiser breakin' down, but we had our awnin's as well. They was all extricated from the various flats an' 'oles where they was stored, an' at the end o' two hours' hard work Number One 'e made out eleven sails o' different sorts and sizes.
And she had a record for bringing the fish home an able vessel and well-known for it. She could carry whole sails when some of the others were double-reefed and thinking of dragging trysails out of the hold. And her skipper was a wonder. "You c'n cut all the others out here comes the real thing. Here's the old dog himself. Did he ever miss a blow? And look at him.
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