Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
From the first we made bad weather of it, for though we were below and could see nothing, yet 'twas easy enough to tell there was a heavy head-sea running, almost as soon as we were well out of harbour. Although Elzevir and I had not had any chance of talking freely for so long, and were now able to speak as we liked, being linked so close together, we said but little.
The breeze held strong all that day, and for the five days following, gradually hauling round, however, and heading us, until, with our yards braced hard in against the lee rigging, and the three royals and mizzen topgallant-sail stowed, we went thrashing away to the westward against a heavy head-sea that kept our decks streaming as far aft as the mainmast, instead of bowling away across the Bay under studding-sails, as we had hoped.
The fresh fair breeze still continues. At noon we had sailed 240 knots. The head-sea we could dispense with, as it makes us all very uncomfortable. Muriel, Baby, the three maids, and several of the crew, are ill to-day with influenza, and I have a slight touch of it, so I suppose it will go right through the ship. Towards the evening the breeze increased to a gale. Saturday, January 6th.
It blew fresh from about east by south; and, in consequence, no sooner had we cleared the harbour, than we were met by a heavy head-sea, and nothing was to be seen on all sides but sickness, and the misery consequent upon the dilapidation of the pretty caps and bonnets of the fair Providencials.
The sea was increasing, and the boats were already drenching their occupants with the heavy showers of spray that they flung aft, as they met and drove headlong into and through the head-sea.
The gale increased during the night, and the head-sea became heavier. There was a good deal of rain in the course of the day. The wind dropped about sunset, and was succeeded by intervals of calm, with occasional sharp squalls. Baby was very poorly all day, but seemed better at night.
We were now standing to the northward, or about N. by W., under single- reefed topsails, and were going about nine knots, the spot we were in being sheltered by the islands and shoals to windward, and the water consequently smooth. In about half an hour's time, however, the frigate passed out from under the lee of El Roque, and we were once more tearing and thrashing through the short head-sea.
"Return, my good fellow! this is the first syllable you have said about the matter!" "Concern on your account has caused me to forget myself. To be frank with you, Captain Truck, and if I wer'n't your very best friend I should be silent, there is considerable excitement getting up about this matter." "Excitement! what is that like? a sort of moral head-sea, do you mean?"
A night of calm, when sleep is well-nigh impossible in the sultry, muggy air, may be followed by a day of blazing sun and an oily swell from the south'ard, connoting great gales in that area of ocean we are sailing toward or all day long the Elsinore, under an overcast sky, royals and sky sails furled, may plunge and buck under wind-pressure into a short and choppy head-sea.
That she was being overdriven was perfectly evident, not only from the tremendous quantity of water that she was shipping forward at every furious dive into the head-sea, but from the steep angle of her decks, which sloped at an inclination of fully forty-five degrees with every lee roll, and from the cataracts of green water that poured in over her lee rail upon every such occasion; her decks, indeed, to leeward were so flooded that no man could have passed along them to leeward without imminent risk of being washed overboard.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking