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A little gust of wind came: it was not strong a mere puff; but the man at the wheel was not attending to his duty: the puff, light as it was, caused the spanker to jibe that is to fly over from one side of the ship to the other the heavy boom passed close over the steersman's head as he cried, "Look out!"
It was at night, in our watch, and the wind had headed us off a little rather suddenly, and when we had flattened in the jibs, we clewed down the topsails, while the two Benton boys got the spanker sheet aft. One of them was at the helm.
As the wind increased, sail was reduced to topsails and courses, jib and spanker; but at seven bells even these were found to be too much for her. "Captain Gordon, it is coming heavier," said Mr. Fluxion. "I think it will be necessary to reef." "I was thinking of that, sir. The wind is north-east, and blowing a gale." "You had better call all hands, and do it at once." "Mr.
So many of his gunners were killed by the double-shotted broadsides that Macdonough jumped from the quarter-deck to take a hand himself and encourage the survivors. He was sighting a gun when a round shot cut the spanker boom, and a fragment of the heavy spar knocked him senseless. Recovering his wits, however, he returned to his gun.
"Pawl the capstan, stopper the cable, and unship the bars!" added the executive officers, all of which was done, and duly reported. "Stations for loosing topsails!" which were shaken out by the ordinary routine, sheeted home, and hoisted up. "Forecastlemen, loose the head sails! After-guard, clear away the spanker! Man the capstan bars, ship and swifter them! Heave around!"
As we worked, Newman slipped into the group as quietly and unobtrusively as he had slipped out nearly two hours before. Coiling down gear, I discovered that the running part of the spanker vang was off the pin, and trailing over the side. It dropped down past the open and lighted porthole of one of the cabin berths. Whose berth? Well, I thought that Boston had the right of it.
A run at grass for my horse, an easy and comfortable wagon, and a guide so original and amusing as Mr. Slick, were either of them enough to induce my acquiescence. As soon as we had taken our seats in the wagon, he observed "We shall progress real handsum now; that 'ere horse goes etarnal fast, he near about set my axle on fire twice. He's a spanker you may depend.
He managed to get a reef in one of the inner jibs and two reefs in the spanker, and then, with the aid of the watch-tackle, to hoist them to the stiff breeze that yet blew. And all through the night, tacking back and forth on the back track, he shook out canvas as fast as the wind would permit.
And as for the Misses Spanker, who daily drive in that superb open wagon with yellow wheels, and who resemble nothing so much as the figures in a Parisian doll-carriage, if they saw an admirer of theirs bargaining for peanut candy at a street stand they would not know him they would no more bow to a man so lost to all the finer sense of the comme il faut than they would nod to a street-sweeper.
One night we were steering a course about north-north-west, under single-reefed topsails, courses and spanker, with the wind at west, while the fog was so thick that the jib-boom could hardly be seen from the forecastle, and supposed ourselves at least thirty miles to the southward of the Scilly Islands.
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