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"Don't you cal'late we can beat down there under a reefed mainsail and jib? It'll take time, but she's the sweetest sailing craft I was ever in in my life," he said. "She's certainly all right, 'cept for that pull to sta'bbo'd," muttered Horry. "Humph! Three men to sail a schooner of this tonnage. And this isn't any capsize wind at that," murmured the captain of the Seamew.
The sea-breeze has caught our craft; let them run up the inner jib, and see that she does not foul her anchor. It was now late in the afternoon, and dinner had been sent into the cabin; the captain descended, and took his seat at the table with Francisco, who ate in silence.
But there were two small boys there who had brought with them a tiny vessel of home-made build, with a couple of lugsails, a jib, and no rudder; and it was a great disappointment to them that this nondescript craft would move, if it moved at all, in an uncertain circle.
"All the same, captain," said the sailor, "if we ever decide to leave the island, it won't be in a balloon, will it? These airboats won't go where we want them to go, and we have had some experience in that way! Look here, we will build a craft of some twenty tons, and then we can make a main-sail, a foresail, and a jib out of that cloth. As to the rest of it, that will help to dress us."
But no sooner had she quite disappeared than the old man's manner swiftly changed. He caught hold of the companion hatch, jammed it across with a noise that was heard throughout the whole vessel; and then he sprang to the helm, with the keen gray eyes afire with a wild excitement. " her, we have her now!" he said, between his teeth; and he called aloud: "Hold the jib to weather there!
"Well, now, you shall hear the truth," says Gower. Whereupon he gives her a graphic account of the scene on the lake. "I knew she'd take that fence," says he. "And I was right; there wasn't even a jib." "I wonder you aren't ashamed of yourself," says Tita indignantly. "Don't wonder any more. I am ashamed of myself. I'm so ashamed that I'm going at once to pay my debts." "Oh, I like that!"
'The Gypsy gentleman, exclaimed a fourth, drinking. And then they all sang in chorus: 'Here the Gypsy gemman see, With his Roman jib and his rome and dree Rome and dree, rum and dry Rally round the Rommany Rye. 'And now, brother, said Mr. Petulengro, 'seeing that you have drunk and been drunken, you will perhaps tell us where you have been, and what about?
"Andrews, do you and two others get down into the sail locker and bring up the storm jib, the small foresail, trysail, and storm mizzen. If it is a tornado, we shan't want to show much sail to it."
Presently an oar-blade fell in a boat beneath the fort, and the sound reached the cutter as distinctly as if it had been produced on her deck. Then came a murmur, like a sigh of the night, a fluttering of the canvas, the creaking of the boom, and the flap of the jib. These well-known sounds were followed by a slight heel in the cutter, and by the bellying of all the sails.
"Say, also, if the tide would have let us do so," returned the pilot, calmly. "Gentlemen, we must be prompt; we have but a mile to go, and the ship appears to fly. That topsail is not enough to keep her up to the wind; we want both jib and mainsail." "'Tis a perilous thing to loosen canvas in such a tempest!" observed the doubtful captain.
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