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Updated: June 10, 2025
Right astern, and directly in the wind's eye of us, was a flat, broad schooner running before the wind, with nothing set but her fore stay-sail. As she lifted to the sea, at the edge of the horizon, her strength of beam was so great, and her bulwarks so little above the water, that she seemed to make way broadside on, rather than to sail in the usual position.
At length we reduced the canvass to the fore-top-mast stay-sail, and main-top-sail, the latter double-reefed. The puffs, however, began to come gale-fashion, and I foresaw we should get it presently in a style that would require good looking to. The ship soon drove within the extremity of the head-land, the lead giving us forty fathoms of water.
Scarcely had we recovered our senses, before the foretopsail went into shreds when we got up a storm stay-sail, and with this did pretty well for some hours, the ship heading the sea much more steadily than before. The gale still held on, however, and we saw no signs of its abating.
Sail after sail was taken in, until only a storm jib, a small fore stay-sail, and a close-reefed main top-sail were left standing. The bank of cloud to the south had risen considerably and, when darkness closed in, the upper edge was lit up by the almost incessant flicker of lightning.
Two days later saw the Galatea making her way to the northward and eastward under a very respectable jury barque-rig, which enabled her to show her fore-topmast stay-sail, reefed fore-sail, and double-reefed fore-topsail on the fore-mast; a main topsail with topgallant-sail over it on the spar which did duty for a main-mast; and a reefed mizen set upon the jib-boom, which had been rigged in, passed aft, and set on end, properly stayed, with its heel stepped down through the hole in the poop from which the mizen-mast had erstwhile sprung.
Her damages reduced themselves to the loss of the top-sail and the foretop-mast stay-sail a loss which it would be easy to repair. Not a drop of water had penetrated through the well-stanched seams of the hull and the deck. The pumps were perfectly free. In this respect there was nothing to fear. There was, then, this interminable hurricane, whose fury nothing seemed able to moderate.
He began to collect the things, and carry them to the dinghy. He took the stay-sail and everything that might be useful; and when he had stowed them in the boat, he took the breaker and filled it with water at the water source in the wood; he collected some bananas and breadfruit, and stowed them in the dinghy with the breaker.
At short intervals between the squalls the wind would fall almost to a calm, and then come on again with such fury, that neither our sails nor rigging could withstand it, several of the sails being split, and a middle stay-sail being wholly lost. The next morning the gale abated, and we repaired the damage we had sustained in the best manner we could.
Harry did not hear the answer, when Hardy returned, but Fairclough said to him: "It has gone down another quarter of an inch since I looked at it, half an hour ago; and it was as low, then, as I have ever seen it. "Mr. Hardy, you had better send the men aloft, and furl the main top-sail, altogether; and run down the fore stay-sail. We can get it up again, as soon as the first burst is over.
The chain-pumps were immediately manned, and such exertions were made that they seemed to gain on the leaks. By the advice of Mr. Rackum, the captain ordered the best bower anchor to be let go, but this did not bring her up. He then ordered the cable to be cut; and the jib and fore-top-mast stay-sail were hoisted to steer by.
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