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Updated: May 4, 2025
Nissr had got wholly out of control, so far as steerage-way was concerned; but the rate of her fall seemed to have been a trifle checked. Alden and the major followed their chief to the companion. All three descended the ladder, which hung inward and away from them at a sharp angle.
The squall lasted a full hour, when the wind died away even more suddenly than it had arisen, and the raft was left tumbling about with little more than steerage-way upon her.
When it was pitch-black we cast off the lines, an' she drifted out on the ebb tide, which just there runs easy a knot an' a half. Then we got up our headsails so as to get steerage-way on her, and bless my soul if the blocks made a creak! Might have been pullin' silk thread through a fur mitten, for all the noise.
George's Channel, we might be set past both Gower and Carteret's harbours, before we could get as much wind as would command the ship; for she was as dull and heavy sailing a vessel as I ever was embarked in, and in my opinion was wholly unfit for the service she was now employed in. When any other vessel would be going three knots with a light wind, we could scarcely give her steerage-way.
The captain took the helm as often as possible, trusting no one but himself to prevent her from dropping to leeward, the effect of the rudder being influenced by the steerage-way. The difference between the true and apparent course being relative to the way on the vessel, the hooker seemed to lie closer to the wind than she did in reality.
Our top-men were at once sent aloft to loose the sails, and presently they faintly began to distend. As yet we hardly had steerage-way. Toward sunset the stranger bore down before the wind, a complete pyramid of canvas. Never before, I venture to say, was Cape Horn so audaciously insulted. Stun'-sails alow and aloft; royals, moon-sails, and everything else.
"There'd be hell to pay." "Ah! but what else?" "The engines would have to be slowed down so as to give no more than steerage-way until oil lamps could be substituted for the binnacle, masthead, and side-lights, also for the engine room." "And there would be excitement and confusion, eh? Everybody would make for the deck, even the captain would leave his cabin unguarded long enough..."
At this time our steerage-way was almost gone; and yet, in giving his orders, the passionate old man made as much fuss as a white squall aboard the Flying Dutchman. Jim turned out to be the regular pilot of the harbour; a post, be it known, of no small profit; and, in his eyes, at least, invested with immense importance.
So far, however, the breeze remained light, and while we were gliding through the water at the rate of something like five knots, with scarcely a ripple under our bows to indicate the fact, the guarda-costa appeared to have little beyond bare steerage-way.
The Young America, with every rag of canvas set, including studding-sails alow and aloft, rolled and pitched gracefully on the long swells of the German Ocean. The wind was very light from the north-west, and there was hardly enough of it to give the ship steerage-way.
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