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Her main-yard had lost one yard-arm, and her lower rigging and sides were covered with wreck. She had her fore-sail, mizen, and fore-stay-sail, and spanker set, which was nearly all the canvass she could show. Our eyes had barely time to examine the Speedy, ere the dark hull of Le Cerf made its appearance.
Equally vain! The gale sings as hoarsely as before. At last, the wind comes round fair; they drop the fore-sail; square the yards, and scud before it; their implacable foe chasing them with tornadoes, as if to show her insensibility to the last.
Down fluttered her main-sail, presently down fluttered her fore-sail; and as she swung to, spilling the breeze from her jibs, close to the bank at the end of the levee, a sailor sprang into the water and swimming until he could wade carried a hawser ashore. This he made fast to the great root of a tree, washed bare by the waters.
Two days later saw the Galatea making her way to the northward and eastward under a very respectable jury barque-rig, which enabled her to show her fore-topmast stay-sail, reefed fore-sail, and double-reefed fore-topsail on the fore-mast; a main topsail with topgallant-sail over it on the spar which did duty for a main-mast; and a reefed mizen set upon the jib-boom, which had been rigged in, passed aft, and set on end, properly stayed, with its heel stepped down through the hole in the poop from which the mizen-mast had erstwhile sprung.
The quantity which lodged on our sails was so great, that we were frequently obliged to throw the ship up in the wind to shake it out of them, otherwise neither they nor the ship could have supported the weight. In the evening it ceased to snow; the weather cleared up, the wind backed to the west, and we spent the night in making two short boards, under close-reefed top-sails and fore-sail.
No sooner was the boat secured astern, and its freight disposed of, than the mate began to make sail. In order to hoist the mainsail well up, he was obliged to carry the halyards to the windlass. Thus aided, he succeeded without much difficulty. He and Jack Tier and Biddy got the jib hoisted by hand; and as for the fore-sail, that would almost set itself.
The gale continued all this day, and till two the next morning, when it fell, and began to veer to the southward and S.W. where it fixed about four, when we made sail and steered east in for the land, under the fore-sail and main-sail; but the wind then rising, and by eight o'clock being increased to a hurricane, with a prodigious sea, we were obliged to take in the main-sail; we then wore the ship, and brought her to with her head to the north west.
The slumbering ocean was not long in awakening; and, by the time the launch was snug under a close-reefed fore-sail, the boat was rising on dark and ever-growing waves, or sinking into the momentary calm of deep furrows, whence it rose again, to feel the rapidly increasing power of the blasts.
One of these is now Otago Harbour, the port of Dunedin. On 26th February it blew hard from west-south-west, so they stood southward. They lost the fore-sail, and then the wind moderated, only to come on with increased fury about daylight, when their main topsail went. The storm continued for forty-eight hours, and half that time they lay to, heading south.
With the sands under our lee, it was necessary to draw off as fast as we could, and we therefore carried a heavy press of sail all the night at last, the wind was so strong that we could only carry close-reefed maintop-sail and reefed fore-sail; and with a heavy sea, which had risen up, we felt that we were in extreme danger. Daylight once more made its appearance.
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