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Updated: June 27, 2025
This was then our object, and the helm was put to starboard as we went slowly past, the tide checking our speed. The ship sheered into a sort of roadstead a very wild one it was as soon as she had room. It was ticklish work, for no one could tell how soon we might hit a rock; but we went clear, luffing quite near to the land, where we let go both bowers at the same instant.
But as it was, with a four-reefed mainsail and a bit of a pocket-handkerchief jib, she lay the course like a Cowes-built racing forty; and if she did ship it green occasionally, there was no rail to hold the water in board. We didn't spare her an ounce. We kept her slap on her course, neither luffing up nor bearing away for anything.
The breathing time allowed me to mystify him with a few more signs; after which, he rejoined his people, showed them exultingly the ship still luffing, and I make no doubt, he thought himself, and induced the rest to think, that the gun had a material agency in producing all these apparent changes.
But a really wicked white squall requires luffing, that is, bringing her head so close to the wind that it will strike her at the acutest angle possible without losing its pressure in the right direction altogether.
Owing to the more leeward position of his vessel, and to the fact that she always head-reached so much in stays, Captain Mull knew that she would not lose much by luffing into the wind, or by making half-boards, while he might gain everything by one well-directed shot. The strife commenced by the sloop-of-war, firing her weather bow-gun, single-shotted, at the Swash.
I succeeded, it is true, in so far maintaining my self-control as to keep a silent tongue; but they continued persistently to haunt me until but steady! Whither away, Dick, my lad? You are out of your course altogether and luffing into the wind's eye, instead of working steadily to windward, tack and tack, and taking the incidents of your story as you come to them.
Instead of coming round into the channel, he kept straight on past the lighthouse towards the yacht, until he was something to seaward of her. Then, luffing quickly, he dropped sail, let go the anchor, and unshipped the mast, while Andree got the oars into the rowlocks.
With the frigate, however, it was different; by yielding to his feeling of exasperation, as he had, her skipper had been betrayed into a very unseamanlike act, in luffing his ship with all her studding- sails upon her, and the result was that he lost the remainder of his booms in an instant, and found himself in a worse pickle than ever.
The frigate kept firing rapidly her foremost guns at the Frenchman, who replied to them in a spirited manner with his aftermost ones, as they could be brought to bear. He was all the time luffing up, trying to eat into the wind, as it were; but as that was scant, it gave the Phoebe, which was well to windward, a great advantage, and she was now rapidly coming up with him.
"A stomacher, and both down!" cried Captain Oughton, as he surveyed the deck. "Be quick, Newton, hand the men below. Don't bring her to the wind yet, he has lost his way by luffing up, and cannot make play again for a few minutes."
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