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Updated: June 19, 2025
"We will try that over again some time." "We are willing," added Donald. The mainsails were lowered, and the young yachtmen embarked in the tenders for the shore. Turtle Head is a rocky point at the northern extremity of Long Island, in Penobscot Bay. There were a few trees near the shore, and under these the party purposed to hold their meeting.
Quite possibly some one will discover some day that there is now machinery for folding and fastening a paper into a form that will not inevitably get into the butter, or lead to bitterness in a railway carriage. This pitch of development reached, I incline to anticipate daily papers much more like the Spectator in form than these present mainsails of our public life.
Presently the boatswain's whistle rung sharp and clear, while his gruff voice, to which his mates bore any thing but mellow burdens, echoed through the ship "All hands shorten sail fore and mainsails haul up haul down to jib in topgallant sails now back the main topsail." By heaving to, we brought the Wave on our weather bow.
Now they were hurriedly thrown up into the wind, their wide mainsails lowered and reefed, whilst the impulse spread as if by magic to the men-of-war and ships in the anchorage. Down came the sails like falling leaves, the rigging swarmed with men bracing yards, lowering top-gallant masts, and preparing we could not conceive for what. "What, in the name of fortune " said Dennis.
To our anxious eyes she seemed to sweep along like a sun-gleam on a cloudy day.... Both her topsails were clear to us.... We could see her jibs swollen with venom, and past them the great sweep of her mainsails with the booms well out over the side to take the full of the wind.... The sweat poured down us, the veins stood out of us like cords.... Once, in the frenzy of my thoughts, the gleaming white sails on our quarter, and the crisp green waves alongside, and the dingy brown boat, and Le Marchant's fiery crimson neck, all shot with red for a moment, and I loosed one hand and drew it over my brow to see if it was blood or only sweat that trickled there.
She was headed southward when last seen, and now White said it was time that they, too, were turning towards their ultimate destination. So, topsails and mainstaysail were taken in, and the helm was put down until fore and mainsails jibed over.
It was at this time that both the OROHENA and the Hira, running in close to the shore, began firing guns and signalling frantically. The three men stepped outside in time to see the two schooners go hastily about and head off shore, dropping mainsails and flying jibs on the run in the teeth of the squall that heeled them far over on the whitened water. Then the rain blotted them out.
Sometimes a storm would blow up suddenly, and then the nets had to be got on board with all speed, and the topsails lowered and mainsails reefed, and the fleet of perhaps a hundred vessels would go racing back into Harwich, there to anchor just above the Guard, or under shelter of the Shotley Spit, or a short way up the Orwell, according to the direction of the wind.
Our mizen mast was carried away both our mainsails split and we smashed a few spars, and lost some running gear; nothing more serious happened, save the loss of as fine a young fellow as ever trode shoe-leather a seaman. He was caught sharply by one of the ropes that gave way, and it carried him overboard like a feather.
He was through struggling with those old coats of his father that on blowy days filled like mainsails and made him trot down the wind in spite of himself. Shoes had been out of the question. Those nimble feet of his had never known the torment of a leather casing. And a real calling it was that the boy felt for the sea.
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