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The memory of this night, six days out from Manilla to Hong Kong, was clearer than the actuality of the room in which he sat, an old man with his activity, his strength, his manhood, far behind him, a hulk. "At ten split the mainsail in pieces. Close reefed the fore and double reefed the main-topsails. Rising gales and heavy head sea. Shipping a great quantity of water and leaking considerable.
I had come to the conclusion that I would bend the fore-topmast staysail first, and after a great deal of laborious work in turning over the various bundles of canvas I came to what I was searching for, but not until I had previously encountered new fore and main-topsails, which I managed, with considerable difficulty, to drag on deck.
The topsails were lowered, and the topmen, like bees, swiftly swarmed aloft, laying out on the yardarms. "Hold on by your teeth and eyelids, Billy," said Tom to his old friend Billy Blueblazes, as he sprang up to his station in the main-top. The canvas was speedily reduced to closely-reefed fore and main-topsails and fore-staysail.
This I considered not only surprising but exceedingly suspicious; as the crew of the ship had contrived, during the previous day, to clear away the wreck of their top-hamper, and to get their craft once more under command by setting their fore and main-topsails and a make-shift fore-staysail, under which the vessel appeared to be doing exceedingly well when the darkness of the preceding night had closed down upon the convoy.
She signalled that she had broken her chronometer and had to trust only to her dead reckoning, so Captain Gillespie hove-to and gave them our latitude and longitude, 45 degrees 15 minutes North and 10 degrees 20 minutes West, displaying the figures chalked on a black-board over our quarter, in order that those on board the other vessel might read the inscription easily with a glass, as we bowed and dipped towards each other across the rolling waves, both with our main-topsails backed.
During the night a heavy gale came on from west-northwest, out of the Gulf of Lyons, which split the main-topsails of several British ships. At daybreak the enemy were discovered in the southeast, standing north to close the land.
The men, who had hardly shifted their clothes and turned in, after being relieved by the port watch at eight bells, came tumbling up on deck hurriedly, and the skipper at once ordered the topsail and foresail to be reefed, spanker to be brailed up, and the main course furled; while the vessel was kept with her head to the southward, that is, as well as the cross sea and the fitful gusts of wind would allow, under her jib, fore and main-topsails and forecourse.
Clew up the courses, then let go the topsail-halliards, and double-reef the fore and main-topsails, and, as you come down, stow the courses."
We were standing on, every ship keeping regularly in line, when what was the disgust of the true men on board the Culloden to hear the captain give the order to back the fore and main-topsails, three other ships having done the same, though we were not even yet within range of the enemy's guns. We soon, however, saw the Admiral speaking with his signals, and ordering us to make more sail.