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Updated: June 3, 2025
The foresail and the fore-staysail were the only sails they could yet get to pay the brig's head off before the wind. These were now set; but the so doing delayed the work of bending the topsail, and the Sea Hawk was now coming fast up with them.
Unfortunately she is far from this, having a damaged rudder, and with both courses torn to shreds. She is lying-to under storm fore-staysail and close-reefed try-sails, wearing at intervals, whenever it can be done with advantage, to keep her away from those "white horses" a-lee.
"Twelve or fourteen hands are quite enough to show," the captain said. "The anchor's up, sir," Joe shouted. "Let it hang there. We will get it aboard, presently. "Now haul that fore-staysail across, ease off the spanker sheet. "Now, as she comes round, haul on the braces and sheets, one by one. Do it in as lubberly a way as you can."
All hands can go below and sleep or play whist. Well, it was blowing half of a small summer gale, when I told Roscoe we'd heave to. Night was coming on. It happened that we had already put two reefs in the big mainsail. The flying-jib and the jib were taken in, and a reef put in the fore-staysail. The mizzen was also taken in.
As such a course would very quickly have brought us up, sail was taken off her; and then, merely under her spanker and fore-staysail, she was brought to the wind, for it was discovered that the bowsprit was badly sprung, and that the topsail sheets were carried away. Happily the squall, having vented its fury on our heads, quickly passed over, and we were left with much less wind than before.
At length they agreed that by labouring at the pump every alternate hour, they might keep the leak under. They now again turned to, to get up jury-masts. A sufficient supply of rope was found for the standing rigging, and by night they had a very respectable foremast stepped and well secured with a short jib-boom, on which a fore-staysail was set.
One day I had gone forward, and when seated on the forecastle, under the shade of the fore-staysail, I listened to his narrative. "Ah! Massa Pringle, my country very good," he began. He always called me Pringle, for he could not manage to pronounce my surname.
The very thought of the possibility of this renewed our spirits. The wind had certainly lessened. Rousing up the Frenchmen to lend a hand, we got a main-trysail and fore-staysail hoisted.
Crofts, and a safe journey to you. I needn't tell you to keep a sharp lookout." "You may trust us for that, sir. We have no desire to rot in one of their prisons, till the end of the war." The captain's gig took him back to the Antelope. The weather sheets of the fore-staysail were eased off, and the square sails swung round.
Then, when the two craft were not more than fifteen feet apart, the schooner's head fell off, she turned broadside-on to the sea, and, our people smartly hauling down our fore-staysail, the brigantine drew slowly ahead and clear of us, our bowsprit-end missing her mainboom by the merest hairbreadth, and the danger was over.
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