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Updated: June 4, 2025
It was a wet morning; there had been a heavy rain since dawn, which impelled by a gusty south-wester came driving on a crowd of women and girls who were assembled before the door of a still unclosed shop. Some protected themselves with umbrellas; some sought shelter beneath a row of old elms that grew alongside the canal that fronted the house.
Week by week the far hills darkened, From the fringing plain of oaks; Till the rains came, and far breaking, On the fierce south-wester tost, Dashed the whole long coast with color, And then vanished and were lost. With these rains the grass springs up, the trees put out, and the winds disappear, leaving in the air a wonderful softness.
Immediately the Alabama set every stitch of canvas, the stranger did the same, and away the two dashed before the fresh south-wester that was blowing. The chase was most exciting, and lasted seven hours; but gradually the Alabama overhauled the suspicious craft, and at 4.30 P.M. was enabled to signal it. The Confederate hoisted the United States flag, and announced herself by an assumed name.
The sun was out bright, the sea of a deep blue, fringed with the white foam of the waves which ran high before a strong south-wester; our solitary ship tore on through the water, as though glad to be out of her confinement; and the ice islands lay scattered upon the ocean here and there, of various sizes and shapes, reflecting the bright rays of the sun, and drifting slowly northward before the gale.
The weather had then moderated, but was still too rough for boating, even in the sheltered roadstead; hence he could get no reports of the state of the ships, which shows incidentally the then defective system of signalling. On the 12th he sailed, on the 13th was again forced into Torbay by a south-wester, but on the 14th got away finally.
There was a projecting bar almost enclosing the creek, which was quite still, even when the surf whitened the stony strand without, driven before a wet and stormy south-wester. It was the merest routine to carry the painter ashore and twist the rotten rope round an exposed root of the great willow tree; for there was not the slightest chance of that ancient craft breaking adrift.
They had no need to worry themselves much about what quarter the wind blew from. Our only wish was that it would veer, or in any case drop. Our communication with the land was limited to sending ashore telegrams and letters for home. By the next morning our patience was already quite exhausted, but not so with the south-wester.
The next morning presented a woful spectacle. Gray skies; heavy and rapidly drifting clouds; pouring rain; runnels of clear water by the side of every gravel-path; a rook or two battling with the squally south-wester high over the wide and desolate park: the wild-ducks at the margin of the ruffled lake flapping their wings as if the wet was too much even for them; nearer at hand the firs and evergreens all dripping.
It was a blustering night, with a dirty south-wester, and the chafing of the harbour waves was thrown up in foams, which the winds swept up the street, they chasing one another as if they were boys at play. It was about two bells in the middle watch, and after our fifth glass, that Joe Geary said as this:
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