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Here we experienced very rough weather, buffeting about under storm stay-sails, and spending nearly a month before the wind favored our passage and enabled the course of the ship to be changed for Valparaiso. One day we sailed parallel with a French sloop-of-war, and it was sublime to watch the two ships rising and falling in those long deep swells of the ocean.
"I'd furl the top-gallant sails and get her stay-sails down, Mr. McPherson." Whenever he gave an order he was careful to give the mate his full title, though at other times he called him indiscriminately Sandy or Mac. The mate gave the necessary commands, while Miggs dived down into the cabin. He came up again looking even graver than when he left the deck.
The ship herself had hauled up her main-sail, hauled down all her stay-sails, and lay with her main-top-sail braced sharp aback, with orders to the quarter-master to keep her little off the wind; the object being to leave a little way through the water, in order to prolong the expected interviews.
Stay-sails, braces, top-gallants, clews, and capstans they hurled at each other like bon bons at a carnival; and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to dark.
Now and then a big ferry-boat puffs into sight, churning the tranquil waters into foam with her huge paddles; a dozen sailing craft are in view, from Lord Mavourneen's smart yawl to the outlandishly rigged Turkish schooner, her masts raking forward like the antlers of a stag at bay, and spreading a motley collection of lateen-sails, stay-sails, square top-sails, and vast spinnakers rigged out with booms and sprits, which it would puzzle a northern sailor to name.
Here we experienced very rough weather, buffeting about under storm stay-sails, and spending nearly a month before the wind favored our passage and enabled the course of the ship to be changed for Valparaiso. One day we sailed parallel with a French sloop-of-war, and it was sublime to watch the two ships rising and falling in those long deep swells of the ocean.
"The cap'en, I know, thought it would blow by and by, for before he turned in he caused even the reefed top-sails and stay-sails to be taken in, and left her snug for the night, with only a close-reefed main-sail and the jib on her. "`Keep a good look-out, Mr Stanchion, says he to the chief officer, as he went down the companion-ladder to his cabin, `and call me if there's the slightest change.
And thus, with her jibs and stay-sails hauled down, and her square canvas gathered close up to her yards by the buntlines and leech-lines, she swerved slightly from her previous course and headed straight for us, still sliding fast through the water with the "way" or momentum remaining to her, and just sufficient to bring her handsomely alongside. "Now stand by, lads!" I cried.
We were now in latitude 44° 29' south, by account, and longitude 144° 30' east, being so near Van Diemen's Land, and so well to the southward as I supposed we were, I had no doubt of being able to cross it, and, availing myself of this southerly wind, to run along the coast to the northward, and reach Port Jackson in a few days; but as we drew near the meridian of the south cape, the gale increased to a mere tempest, attended with thick hazy weather, and a most astonishing high sea; this brought us under a reefed fore-sail, balanced mizzen, and the three storm stay-sails.
"Give her the stay-sails, if you will, and no harm done; but a true seaman will never get a bagful of wind between his mainmast and his lee-swifter, if-so-be he knows his business. But words are like thunder, which rumbles aloft, without coming down a spar, as I have yet seen; let us therefore put the question to some one who has been on the water, and knows a little of life and of ships."
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