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Updated: May 11, 2025
The weather was now as favourable as we could possibly wish, the wind being just fresh enough to send us along at top speed, gunwale-to, under whole canvas, while the sea was going down rapidly.
The crazy craft careened gunwale-to, notwithstanding that George had put his helm promptly up, and in another moment she would undoubtedly have gone over with them; but just as the water was beginning to pour in over the gunwale, crack! went the mast and the thwart with it over the side.
With the appearance of the sun above the horizon the clouds gradually disappeared, the wind dropped, the surface of the ocean became like heaving oil; and the Aurora, losing steerage-way, rolled almost gunwale-to, with her canvas flapping loudly and monotonously against her masts. "A small topsail-schooner!" muttered George.
The breeze freshened with the disappearance of the sun beneath the horizon, and the boat, under whole canvas and in the perfectly smooth water of the canal-like channel, fairly flew along, careening almost gunwale-to, with a merry buzzing of water at her sharp stem, as she sheared through it with a sound like the rending of silk.
"What d'ye say, Tom; shall us take down a reef!" asked one of the men. "Reef? No, certingly not. Didn't you hear the gentleman say as how we was to `crack on' because he's in a hurry? Give her whole canvas," replied the coxswain. With a shivering flutter and a sudden violent jerk the sail was run up; and, careening gunwale-to, away dashed the lively boat toward the harbour.
Away sped the boat to the southward and westward, careening gunwale-to, and sending the spray flying in such drenching showers over the weather bow, that presently the water rose above the bottom boards and splashed like a miniature sea in the lee bilge, compelling Dick to abandon the mainsheet to Stukely while he took a bucket and proceeded to bale.
They were now also able to realise more fully than they had yet the tremendous strength of the gale and power of the sea; the unfortunate barque careening gunwale-to under the pressure of the wind upon her scanty canvas, whilst the sea deluged her decks fore and aft; the whole of her lee and a considerable portion of her weather bulwarks having already been carried away, together with her spare spars; whilst every sea which broke on board her swept something or other off the deck and into the sea to leeward.
Before dark, the wind blew with considerable force, not steadily, but in fitful gusts: and the sun, as he descended in the wave, warned them, by his red and fiery aspect, to prepare for an increase of the gale. The schooner flew before it, under her diminished sail, rolling gunwale-to in the deep trough, or lurching heavily as her weather quarter was borne up aloft by the culminating swell.
At this moment a great black cloud drifted up athwart the half-moon, shutting off her light and causing a darkness to fall upon the scene that, for a few seconds and until the eye grew accustomed to it, seemed almost Egyptian in its intensity, while the breeze freshened to such an extent as to careen the sailing-boat gunwale-to and nearly double her speed through the water.
The jabber of the black boatmen and the exhilarating sensation of being once more afloat had quite a tonic effect upon my spirits, which rose higher and higher as we tore down past the Palisades, the boat careening gunwale-to, with the hissing, sparkling foam seething past and trailing away in a long wake astern.
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