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It is not yet quite light, but we hear other mainsails going up all round us. A cool drizzle makes the morning unmistakably uncomfortable, and we stand around half asleep, with our sore hands in our pockets, wishing we were at home.
Another gun was fired; and all of a sudden there was a rattling of blocks and chains, and the four mainsails slowly rose, and the flapping jibs were run out. The bows drifted round: which would get way on her first? But now there was a wild uproar of voices. The boom end of one of the yachts had caught one of the stays of her companion, and both were brought up head to wind.
This gloomy recitative appears to serve as a moment of rest to the mysterious combating forces, and indicates a species of patrol kept in the unknown. The hooker held wildly on her course. Her two mainsails especially were doing fearful work. The sky and sea were as of ink with jets of foam running higher than the mast.
Where there was a forest of bare poles are soon hundreds of jibs and mainsails, rosy in the first rays of the rising sun. The schooners that have been drifting idly, are, as by magic, under weigh, cutting across each other's bows, slipping out of menacing entanglements, avoiding collisions by a series of nautical miracles.
Two o'clock was past, and still the red mainsails of the skiffs hung motionless, and their images quivered head downwards in the glassy swell, "As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean." It was neap-tide, too, and therefore nothing could be done among the rocks.
But I, who have seen fleets of two and three deckers and that of all nations, except your Mohawks, mayhap, whose cruisers I will confess never to have fallen in with lying as snug as so many white gulls, under reefed mainsails, know how to take the strain off a ship, and to keep my bulkheads in their places." "I deny the judgment of heaving-to a boat under her after square-sails," retorted Dick.
Before long, no one could lash his hammock with the seven turns in a shorter time than he. After learning the work on the mainsails and trysails he was sent to practise the more acrobatic duties in the tops, and when two months had passed, no one excelled him in quickness aloft.
Barely was she clear of the land when a string of small flags broke out from her mizzen rigging, and almost as if by magic, the yard arms of all three vessels were alive with men, and royals, top gallants, and mainsails with machine-like precision were dewed up and furled, and each ship, stripped of all but its topsails, rounded to, with its head to the wind.
There remained no alternative but to attempt to ware. Without waiting longer than to assure himself of the facts, Daggett ordered his helm put up and the main gaff lowered. At that moment both the schooners were under their jibs and foresails, each without its bonnet, and double-reefed mainsails.
The wind freshened to a gale, and we made twelve knots an hour under double reefed mainsails and topsails. In the narrow straits we escaped the heavy waves encountered at sea in a similar breeze. Turning at right angles in the Gulf of Tartary, we began to roll until walking was no easy matter.
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