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Updated: May 4, 2025
Ay, she's a man-o'-war sure enough Up go the courses and down comes the jib, all at once, man-o'-war fashion. And there's clue up royals and t'gallan's'ls to prevent 'em from beating themselves to pieces against the spars and rigging, that is, for all the canvas she could set wouldn't give her steerage-way, much less cause her to run away from us.
With the appearance of the sun above the horizon the clouds gradually disappeared, the wind dropped, the surface of the ocean became like heaving oil; and the Aurora, losing steerage-way, rolled almost gunwale-to, with her canvas flapping loudly and monotonously against her masts. "A small topsail-schooner!" muttered George.
"Spread the corner of the mainsail a little more if you can, boys, so as to give her better steerage-way. We've got to make that ship! Hold her steady on the light, Heck, even if you have to put her in the trough of the sea. We might as well founder as drift past!"
Everything seemed propitious to the lugger and the intentions of her commander, The wind went down gradually, until there was little more than air enough to keep steerage-way on the vessel, while the ripple on the water disappeared, leaving nothing behind it but the long, heavy ground-swell that always stirs the bosom of the ocean, like the heaving respiration of some gigantic animal.
As Marcel curtly bade me good-night and went below upon being relieved, after giving me the course to be steered, and expressing his forebodings concerning the weather, I walked aft, glanced into the binnacle, and inquired of the helmsman whether the ship still held steerage-way, to which he replied that she did, and that was about all, the man whom he had relieved at eight bells having informed him that the log, when last hove, had recorded a speed of barely two and a half knots.
A hundred feet distant, I held the dancing sloop to mere steerage-way, while Fairfax hailed in a voice which went roaring across the water like a gun. "Ahoy, the bark!" A red-faced man with a black beard thrust his head up above the after rail, and answered, using English, yet with a faint accent which was not Dutch. What he looked like below the shoulders could not be discerned.
We slowed to little more than steerage-way and lay listening. Presently a hand-bellows foghorn jarred like a corncrake, and there rattled out of the mist a big ship literally above us. We could count the rivets in her plates as we scrooped by, and the little drops of dew gathered below them. "Wonder why they're always barks always steel always four-masted an' never less than two thousand tons.
'No, it is a following sea, said Frithiof; 'and with a following sea you shall not get good steerage-way. The sea was as smooth as a duck-pond, except for a regular oily swell.
In the morning of one specially warm night we three were sitting immediately in front of the wheel-house, where an old Swedish boatswain whom we called 'Frithiof the Dane' was at the wheel, pretending that he could not hear our stories. Once or twice Frithiof spun the spokes curiously, and Keller lifted his head from a long chair to ask, 'What is it? Can't you get any steerage-way on her?
But the mate was not to be daunted; so, stationing what men he had at the braces, he sprang upon the bulwarks, and, bidding everybody keep wide awake, ordered the helm up. In a few moments, we were running in. Being toward noon, the wind was fast leaving us, and, by the time the breakers were roaring on either hand, little more than steerage-way was left.
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