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Updated: May 19, 2025
By keeping the wind abeam, Jack thought he should be going toward the rock of Mulford. In one hour, or even in less time, he expected to reach it, and he was guided by time, in his calculations, as much as by any other criterion. Previously to quitting the brig, he had gone up a few ratlins of the fore-rigging to take the bearings of the fire on Mulford's rock, but the light was no longer visible.
Hours after hours we flew on, plunging headlong through the darkness, and often, to my excited imagination, strange shrieks and cries seemed to come out of the obscurity. Once as we flew on, as I stood watching black masses of water rising on our quarter and rolling on abeam of us, I fancied that I saw a large ship, her hull with her lofty masts towering up to the skies, close to us.
On American steamboats the after cabin is the aristocratic one; on the Amoor the case is reversed. The steerage passengers lived, moved, and had their being and baggage aft the engine, while their betters were forward. This arrangement gave the steerage the benefit of all cinders and smoke, unless the wind was abeam or astern. Steam navigation on the Amoor dates from 1854.
Of current there was none; and there being no tides in the Mediterranean, the ship would have lain perfectly stationary all the morning, but for a very light air from the southward. Before this air, however, she had moved to the westward about a couple of miles, until she had got the government-house nearly abeam.
The favourable north-wester lasted another twelve hours, driving us down our latitudes on the starboard tack, the ship sailing pretty free, with the wind nearly abeam and all her canvas set that could draw, racing through the water like a crack cutter at a regatta; when, on the evening of our eleventh day out, by which time we had nearly reached the parallel of Madeira, although forty miles or so to the westward of the island, the breeze failed us all of a sudden, just close on to midnight, a dead calm setting in, accompanied by a heavy rolling swell.
But that little craft, her big spinnaker filled by the southeast trade, was making a good race of it. Cape Martin, the southeasternmost point of Nuku-hiva, was abeam, and Comptroller Bay was opening up as we fled past its wide entrance, where Sail Rock, for all the world like the spritsail of a Columbia River salmon-boat, was making brave weather of it in the smashing southeast swell.
On Mondays the whole forenoon was devoted to these evolutions, the sails being set one after the other, topsails, topgallants, royals, and even stu'nsails sometimes, besides the courses and headsails below; until, often, the whole ship was piled with canvas as if she were fetching down Channel on a cruise, her spars quivering with the strain frequently, when we had the wind abeam from the southward and east'ard, and every rope as taut as a bar of iron!
Studding-sail booms were to be run out, the sails set, and the ship's head laid to the northward, keeping a little to seaward of the chase. At this moment the Proserpine had the Point of Piane, and the little village of Abate, nearly abeam. The ship might have been going four knots through the water, and the distance across the mouth of the bay was something like thirty miles.
Ada was not long permitted to enjoy this, to her, unusual scene, before her uncle again summoned her below; and this time she was obliged to obey. He, however, had given strict orders to be called should anything occur. The wind, as the night drew on, grew considerably lighter, and this gave a decided advantage to the speronara, which rapidly came up abeam.
I had seldom seen a vessel so weatherly before. In an hour more, she was abreast of the town, and abeam of the Josefa, who, from being cooped up in the narrow inner channel, had, ever since the sea breeze set down, been bothering with short tacks, about, and about, every minute.
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