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Updated: July 17, 2025
She still came on at a spanking pace; but her canvas was reefed down rapidly until there was nothing left but the foretopsail, flying jib and the spanker. Soon these began to shake and then her fair wind left her entirely. She had reached the belt of calm in which the dead whale and my sloop still lay. In my ears the savage voice from the cloud to the south'ard was now a roar.
In the summer months I used generally to accompany Sam in the short trading trips he made in a little foretopsail schooner of which he was the registered owner, and generally took the command when we would fetch a compass for Falmouth or Torquay, and other small western ports; between which places and Plymouth the schooner went to and fro when wind and weather permitted.
One and another of the backstays parted, the foretopsail burst with a cannon-like report, after which a terrible rending sound, followed by an indescribable crash, told that both masts had gone by the board.
However, she still continued to near our hulk, and we felt that, if she but held her present course, she must eventually come so close as to perceive us. In about an hour after we first discovered her, we could clearly see the people on her decks. She was a long, low, and rakish-looking topsail schooner, with a black ball in her foretopsail, and had, apparently, a full crew.
The captain, foreseeing the inevitable, and determined, if he could not save his vessel, to save precious lives his wife and child being on board boldly set his lower foretopsail, to force his vessel stem on as far ashore on the mainland as possible; and about 9 p.m., in this dark freezing snowstorm, the stem of his large vessel, drawing about twenty-three feet of water, struck the land.
Raoul had a proof into what dangerous proximity to the frigate he had got by the sound of the calls on board her, and the stillness of the sea was yet so great that the creaking of her fore-yard was actually audible to him as the English rounded in their braces briskly while laying their foretopsail aback. At that moment a second respiration of the atmosphere gave birth to the breeze.
After Roswell had made a stretch out into the bay of about a mile, he laid his foretopsail flat aback, hauled over his jib-sheet, and put his helm hard down, in waiting for the other schooner to come out and join him. In a quarter of an hour, Daggett got within hail. "Well," called out the last, "you see I was right, Garner; wind enough out here, and more, still further from the land.
Is that the villain?" and pointed over the starboard quarter. One look was enough for me. I had stared hard enough at that long black hull three days before, while it thrashed us to death with its whirling devilries. And there was no mistaking the splash of red on his foretopsail.
Already the distant roar of the billow was heard, proving that it had begun to break. "The wind comes with it," said Van der Kemp. "Stand by!" cried the captain, gazing intently over the side. Next moment came the sharp order to hoist the foretopsail and jib, soon followed by "Cut the cable!" There was breeze enough to swing the vessel quickly round.
As the vessel payed off, the sound of surf, loudly thundering against some rocky rampart projecting from the deep which opposed the onward roll of the ocean billows, was heard louder and louder; and, in another instant, Mr Macdougall and those who stood beside him on the poop held their breath with awe as the Esmeralda glided by a triangular-shaped black peak that seemed as high as the foretopsail yard so closely that they could apparently have touched it by merely stretching out their hands, while over it the waves, driven by the south wind, were breaking in columns of spray, flakes of which fell on the faces of all aft, as they looked over the side, and trembled at the narrowly-avoided danger.
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