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"Set that storm jib!" came the next order, when the main sails had been furled, and that was no easy task with the sharp pitching and tossing of the schooner. Not a very seamanlike job was made of it, but there was no time for the finer touches. The sails were just clewed up to prevent them from blowing away, until more time could be devoted to them.
"The fleet anchored at Spithead": can anyone want a better sentence for brevity and seamanlike ring? But the "cast-anchor" trick, with its affectation of being a sea-phrase for why not write just as well "threw anchor," "flung anchor," or "shied anchor"? is intolerably odious to a sailor's ear. From first to last the seaman's thoughts are very much concerned with his anchors.
With this view, he issued forth to a place hard by, where sea-stores were sold, purchased a second-hand hammock, and had it slung in seamanlike fashion from the ceiling of the counting-house. He also caused to be erected, in the same mouldy cabin, an old ship's stove with a rusty funnel to carry the smoke through the roof; and these arrangements completed, surveyed them with ineffable delight.
I persuaded the captain that there was no need to sound the whistle, but he declined gruffly to increase his speed. "I might as well be shot as run my boat ashore," he growled, with a few emphatic seamanlike adjectives that appeared to belong to nothing in particular. "And any one that doesn't like my way of running a boat can get out and walk."
As he was most truly a landsman, knowing nothing about the sea or the various intricate methods of navigating a vessel thereupon, he was compelled to secure a real captain one who would be able to take charge of the vessel and crew, and who would do, and have done, in a thoroughly seamanlike manner, what his nominal skipper should desire and ordain.
"What craft is that, and what do you want?" hailed the officer of the deck, from above. "The tender 'Lurline, sir, with three of your gentlemen to put h'aboard of you, sir," the Briton bellowed through a window of the wheel-house. "Very good, then. Come alongside," directed the officer of the deck. In his most seamanlike style the Briton ranged alongside.
Every seamanlike effort was made to save the vessel, and when all was unavailing, Perry showed equal skill and resolution in landing the crew in a heavy January swell, with a violent wind. He was himself the last to leave the vessel. He was not merely acquitted of neglect, but his conduct was extolled by a court of inquiry.
Captain Transom, immediately on being informed how matters stood, with seamanlike promptitude determined to lighten the Gleam, and send her in with the boats, for the purpose of destroying the haunt of the pirates, and recovering the men, if they were still alive; but before any thing could be done, it came on to blow, and for a week we had great difficulty in maintaining our position off the coast against the strength of the gale and lee current.
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