United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
After remaining some time at a place, we might succeed in occasionally outsailing or outrowing the natives; but what sort of a figure would our boats cut at the next point to which the ship might be ordered say a thousand miles farther from, or nearer to, the equator, where all the circumstances would be totally different.
To avoid her by outsailing her, he knew to be hopeless except that, by carrying on sail to the very last, he might induce her to do the same, till, perhaps, she might carry away her masts or spars, and the victory might remain with the stoutest and best-found ship.
In the excitement of the race all our woes were forgotten; we only thought of the possibility of the ship getting there first. We drew gradually nearer to the stranger, who, like us, was carrying all the sail he had got, but, being able to go a point or two free, was outsailing us.
Soon after, the wind shifted two points, from S.S.W. to south, giving the British the weather-gage, and preventing the enemy from making their escape to the land. Outsailing her consorts, the Flora came up with the enemy at half-past six; and giving the Babet a passing broadside, stood on and attacked the Pomone.
Another French frigate at anchor under the castle, weighed and stood off. The first man-of-war, suspecting the character of the stranger, made sail, but the Weymouth, outsailing her, got close under her lee, keeping his French ensign flying to prevent the enemy from firing at his masts till he was near enough.
We got the passengers, men, women, children, and servants into her, as fast as possible, and followed ourselves. Fortunately, there had been a brig in company for some time, and she was now less than two leagues ahead of us, outsailing the Belle Savage a little.
'Twas clear she was outsailing us, and the seasoned mariners among my comrades foretold that in a couple of hours we should be at her mercy. We had spread all the canvas we could carry, and could only wait and hope. I sat on a coil of rope, suffering much pain from my wound, and trembling with anxiety as I watched the vessel drawing nearer and nearer.
The stranger was under all plain sail, to topgallantsails, and was slipping through the water like a witch; but I had very little fear of her outsailing the Eros, for, fast as that ship had been when she first fell into our hands, the skipper had improved her speed on a wind nearly a knot, merely by a careful readjustment of the ballast; and now she fully justified my faith in her by handsomely holding her own, and perhaps rather more, but this I could scarcely judge, for since we remained hove-to, the others rapidly drew away from us.
New York as the chief port has the largest body of pilots, and in the old days, before the triumph of steam, had a fleet of some thirty boats, trim little schooners of about eighty tons, rigged like yachts, and often outsailing the best of them.
She slapped six shots at us, one after another, as a haughty hint to us to stop; but we meant to escape, and at last we did, outsailing her by thirteen inches to her foot one foot to her twelve though she stuck to our skirts the whole afternoon and kept us in an agony of anxiety. The sun was setting when she abandoned us: she was then some five or six miles distant on our weather quarter.
Word Of The Day