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The blows sounded way out over the Canal and over the fields and far away, like a mighty fire-alarm, and all the children, that is all but Jib, who was driving the mules and would get his dinner later, came running into the cabin. A great clatter of tin plates and knives and forks there was, and very nice did those potatoes and that bacon taste.
This lifted the boat beautifully, and made her steer ever so much easier than had I tried to run her with a close-reefed mainsail, for the lopping seas would have caught the boom, and either capsized us or carried the mast away, and yet I had to keep enough canvas on her jib and mat foresail to run away from the toppling mountains of water behind us.
"I wonder if you are one of the speakers here to-day," said a voice behind him. Bradley turned, and saw a small man with a stubby mustache, under whose derby hat-rim a pair of round black eyes shone with a keen glitter. "No, sir, I'm not." "Beg pardon, no harm done. Saw you get off with your valise; knew you weren't a native by the cut o' y'r jib. Excuse me, I hope?"
The dashing of this spar about carried away the foretop-mast, and almost as a necessary consequence, the jib with the jib-boom went along with it. The schooner instantly became unmanageable, and was driven bodily to leeward.
The galliot was at that time just under steerage way, her topsail had been loosed and her jib hoisted, but the former had not been sheeted home, for the three men below could not, in the dark, find the ropes.
"Haul in the larboard braces brace sharp up port the helm, and bring her to the wind, quarter-master." "Port, it is, Sir," said the man at the helm, and the vessel was close hauled upon the starboard tack; but she did not seem to move very fast, although, she had a square mainsail, boom mainsail, and jib.
The whole day passed without making ten miles; the boat was kept under the jib, as they dared not hoist the mainsail, and the wind was so variable that much time was lost in humouring its caprices.
As it filled, the Ghost's bow swung off and I had to put the wheel down a few spokes and steady her. I had devised an automatic jib-sheet which passed the jib across of itself, so there was no need for Maud to attend to that; but she was still hoisting the jib when I put the wheel hard down. It was a moment of anxiety, for the Ghost was rushing directly upon the beach, a stone's throw distant.
All you can see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out straight and "streaking it" through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyes right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you where the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib.
Her ordinary suit of sails consisted of the usual square sails in the foremast, fore topmast staysail and jib, large fore and main topsails, maintop sail, topgallant sail and royal, and on the mizen-mast spanker and gaff topsail.
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