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Updated: May 9, 2025
The helm was put up, and the little craft, paying off under her head-sail, before the rough sea, which came roaring onwards, had reached her, was running up Channel towards the Cornish coast. Old Paul continued to groan, seeming unconscious, and evidently suffering great pain.
All head-sail is not a convenient show of cloth to claw off a lee-shore with; but I still hope to escape the misfortune of laying eyes on the coast of Africa." "Are we far from it?" asked Eve, who sufficiently understood the danger of being on an uninhabitable shore in their present situation; one in which it was vain to seek for a port.
So we set her foresail with the tack at the cat-head, and lashed her helm a little to starboard, to answer her head-sail, and so set her agoing, with neither cat or dog in her; and it was not above two hours before we saw her run right ashore upon the coast, a little beyond the Cape Comorin; and away we went round about Ceylon, for the coast of Coromandel.
We now had a very great advantage over our antagonist, from the fact that all our spars were intact, while he was greatly hampered by the loss of so much head-sail; but the advantage did not remain with us very long, for at the next exchange of broadsides down came our fore-topmast, at the same instant that the Dutchman's mizenmast went over the side.
"That has been a good morning's work," the captain said, as they sat down to dinner. "We are a little short of head-sail, but that will make no great difference in our rate of sailing, especially if the wind is aft. We are ready to meet with another storm again, if it should come which is not likely. "We are ready for anything, in fact, except a heavily-armed privateer.
"Draw down the jib-sheet!" Joe obeyed, and, the head-sail filling, forced her off on the other tack. This manoeuver had turned French Pete's bunk from the lee to the weather side, and rolled him out on the cabin floor, where he lay in a drunken stupor.
They have lowered down the main-sail and I presume, intend getting up some head-sail, so as to pay off, and run under the lee of the brig for shelter. Put the helm up, and run down so as to keep the schooner about two points on our larboard bow. Get the gun round, and pitch it into her."
"She's scarcely a mile now from the shore," observed Higson; "she's making head-sail; they must be looking out for the least dangerous spot on which to run her." Just as he spoke there came another furious downpour, forming a thick veil round the ship, which shut out every distant object, so that scarcely the outline of either lofty cliff could be seen.
The rent plank and shattered ceiling showed the spot where the destructive missile had entered. Compressing his lips like a man resolved, the commander of the Coquette bent further forward, and glanced at the wheel. The quarter-master, who held the spokes, was erect, steady, and kept his eye on the leech of the head-sail, as unerringly as the needle points to the pole.
The mate shouted in the ear of the sailor who rowed the stroke-oar and who was lying next to him: “Crawl forward and try and fix the floor-board there, so as to show a few inches above the bow to act as a head-sail. If she broaches to, it is all up with us. As you go along tell each man to shift himself a bit more aft. Her stern must be well down or I can never keep her straight.
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