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Updated: June 24, 2025
If it was only a half-gale we'd weather it all right, I make no doubt; but, if it should come to blow hard, d'ee see, we have no occasion to kill and eat you, as we'd all be killed together and eaten by the sharks." "Sharks!" exclaimed Mr Luke, whose damp garments were steaming under the powerful sun like a boiler on washing-day; "are there sharks here?"
This he discharged while the cook ran a trawl-tub to the truck. It was the prearranged signal for Pete Ellinwood to come in. As Code waited he had no doubt that smoke was from a revenue cutter or cruiser from Halifax with his arrest warrant. There was a stiff westerly breeze, and Code, glancing up at the cloud formations, saw that there would be a beautiful racing half-gale on by noon.
Escaping thus from his duennaship, she wanted to see a storm, as she called the half-gale which was blowing, and clambered bravely alone to the quarter-deck, where the skipper took her in charge, showed her the compass, walked her up and down a little, and finally gave her a post at the foot of the shrouds.
"Let Serena and I cast the dead men overboard," he said; "'tis better than that we should keep them on board, for we know not how long it may be ere we get to land again." Mrs. Marston shuddered. "As you will, Lilo. When it is done, I will come on deck again and help with the sails." An hour later the schooner was racing under close-reefed canvas before a half-gale from the eastward.
Olive, too, was quite at home on board a yacht, and the two marched the decks together in keen enjoyment of the bite of the wind and the whip of the salt spray. By nightfall the wind had increased to a half-gale but the "Starlight" rode through the sea in splendid defiance, sure of her staunchness and steady in her purpose.
Bows crumpled up; bowsprit snapped away; foremast, loosed from its stay, and forced back by the pressure of a half-gale on the close-hauled foresail, carried over to port in a tangle of rope and wire and canvas. Thrown back on her haunches, the "Starlight" gasped and shivered and began to settle by the head from the rush of water into the forecastle. "All on deck with lifebelts!"
Better stay in now it's getting foggy." When the watch turned out at midnight, they found a vicious half-gale blowing from the northeast, which, added to the speed of the steamship, made, so far as effects on her deck went, a fairly uncomfortable whole gale of chilly wind.
And after that oh, well, all sorts of things might happen. And now the moment had come. It was true that he had always pictured the scene as taking place by moonlight and at present there was a half-gale blowing, out of an inky sky; also on the present occasion anything in the nature of a low-voiced speech was absolutely out of the question owing to the uproar of the elements.
They agreed that there were all the signs of a stiff westerly wind not the ordinary afternoon sea-breeze, but a half-gale, which even then was springing up. Next morning found their predictions verified. The sun was shining brightly, but something more than a half-gale was shrieking up the Carquinez Straits, and the Mary Rebecca got under way with two reefs in her mainsail and one in her foresail.
If he had been a moment earlier, he might have succeeded in getting at least one of them safely launched, but now the Mary Rogers was settling to her doom with a speed which made the crew senseless with terror. A half-gale which promised to swell soon into a veritable hurricane seemed to be lifting the freighter by the heel and driving her nose into the sea.
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