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Updated: July 17, 2025
"At nine o'clock in the morning I was sent aloft by the sailmaker to help unbend the foretopsail, which was to be repaired, and looking down saw the decks were rapidly filling with natives. Mr. Brown had already gone ashore with the chief Vaka-ta-Bula, Mr. Mariner was in the cabin writing, and the rest of the officers were engaged in various work on deck. Just then I saw Mr.
But the morning after, the wind changed, and the captain ordered the men to put up the foresail, and brigantine and foretopsail, which greatly lessened the rolling of the vessel. Lady Helena and Mary Grant were able to come on deck at daybreak, where they found Lord Glenarvan, Major McNabbs and the captain. "And how do you stand the sea, Miss Mary?" said Lord Glenarvan. "Pretty well, my Lord.
The second officer intimated that all hands would have to be called to reef the topsails and haul the mainsail up and stow it, but his men were imbued with heroic dash, and would not hear of such unseamanlike weakness. They assured him that they could take the sail in without calling the watch below. Amid much noise and many larks they managed to get the foretopsail reefed.
It was a lesson which, like the one he had just taught me in navigation, I never forgot. Towards sunset that afternoon, when we were entering the Bay of Biscay, the lookout man on the foretopsail yard hailed the deck. "Sail in sight, sir!" he sang out loudly. "She's on our port bow, sir."
"The Steadfast would be deeper in the water, and has a new cloth on her foretopsail, and that ship has not," observed old Tom. "We should be thankful, whatever she is," said Mr Hart. "Let us return thanks to God for sending her to rescue us." The men roused up on hearing that a ship was approaching, and managed even to get their oars out to pull alongside her.
Strong gales; bore away for the North Channel, carrying away the foretopsail and lost jib; hove the log several times and found the ship going through the water at the rate of 18 to 18 1/2 knots; lee rail under water and rigging slack. Distance run in twenty-four hours, 436 miles."
Looking in the direction Bulger pointed, he saw that the foretopsail sheet block had fallen on deck, within an inch of where he would have been but for the intervention of Bulger's hook. Glancing aloft, he saw Parmiter grinning down at him. "Hitch that block to a halyard, youngster," said the man.
It was from Dickey. He thought I should be killed. So should I, if I had had time to think about the matter; but providentially at that moment a sudden puff of wind bulged out the foretopsail to its utmost extent, and I striking it at the moment, away it sent me, as from a catapult, right over the bows, clear of the vessel. Had I struck the deck or bulwarks I should have been killed.
It was evening already when the old Anna Maria, floating slowly under a couple of jibs and a foretopsail, rounded the point and opened the town. The bay, with its fringe of palms, lay clear before her; beyond its farthest edge, the sun had just set, leaving his glories to burn out behind him, and astern of them in the east the swift tropic night was racing up the sky.
As the second mate was describing a gale he had encountered off Cape Race, Newfoundland, we were suddenly taken all aback, and the blast came upon us furiously. We continued to scud under a double-reefed mainsail and foretopsail till dusk; but, as the sea ran high, the captain thought it safest to bring her to.
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