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By the 12th of May, being in latitude 31 degrees 10 minutes we began to meet with westerly winds, which freshened on us, and did not leave us till a little before we made the Cape. Sometimes it blew so hard that it put us under a fore-course; especially in the night; but in the daytime we had commonly our main topsail reefed.
The reef-tackle was rounded cautiously in, and its end rose to the surface without the hand that had so lately grasped it. The man himself never re-appeared. Captain Truck had now the means of setting three stay-sails, the spanker, and the fore-course; sails sufficient, he thought, to answer his present purposes.
Meanwhile the brig, although under her fore-course only, and running before the wind, needed to be steered; and this job Leslie undertook to personally attend to throughout the day, thus sparing another man for the pressing work on the forecastle.
The corvette now hauled up her fore-course, and let her top-gallant sails settle on the caps, though a dead silence reigned in her. "Give me the trumpet," said Captain Truck, stepping to the rail; "the gentleman is about to give us a piece of his mind."
About the time the former began to lose its strength, however, the fore-course and the main-sail were got on the brigantine, with the intention of working her up toward Whitestone, where the tides meet, and near which the revenue-steamer was known to be anchored. We say near, though it was, in fact, a mile or two more to the eastward, and close to the extremity of the Point.
At this moment, the state of the game was as follows: The Dawn was lying-to, with her fore-course up, main-sail furled, main-top-sail aback, and top-gallant yards on the caps, jib and spanker both set.
By eleven o'clock all was hushed throughout the ship: lights out, the captain turned in, nothing stirring forward save the flitting shape of the look-out under the yawn of the pale square of fore-course.
There was a thin, eddying coil of bluish smoke hurrying from the galley chimney under the high-arching foot of the fore-course and out over the port cat-head; and the watch, having no sail-trimming to attend to, were squatted upon their hams on the fore deck, playing cards.
Her fore-course was hauled up, and the spanker was brailed; then the royals were clewed up and furled; the topgallant-sails followed; and presently the Proserpine was reduced to her three topsails and jib. All this, finished just as Cuffe reappeared on deck, was done by the watch and in about five minutes.
When the Dover weighed, the admiral's upper sail was not visible from her tops, though the Warspite's hull had not yet disappeared from her deck. She left the fleet, or the portions of it that still remained at anchor, with her fore-course set, and hauled by the wind, under double-reefed top-sails, a single reef in her main-sail, and with her main-topgallant sail set over its proper sail.
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