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Updated: May 19, 2025
"We are bound to Hamburg," said the mate, "which lies, hereaway, on our lee-beam, and no man has a right to complain of our steering our course. The mist has shut the frigate in again, and, it being very certain he will overhaul us on a bow-line, I advise you, Miles, to lay the yards perfectly square, edge away two points more, and set the weather stun'-sails.
But I did not have much leisure to indulge in such thoughts; for the men were now getting some stun'-sails ready to hoist aloft, as the wind was getting fairer and fairer for us; and these stun'-sails are light canvas which are spread at such times, away out beyond the ends of the yards, where they overhang the wide water, like the wings of a great bird.
While the stun'-sails were lying all tumbled upon the deck, and the sailors were fastening them to the booms, getting them ready to hoist, the mate ordered me to do a great many simple things, none of which could I comprehend, owing to the queer words he used; and then, seeing me stand quite perplexed and confounded, he would roar out at me, and call me all manner of names, and the sailors would laugh and wink to each other, but durst not go farther than that, for fear of the mate, who in his own presence would not let any body laugh at me but himself.
At last we hoisted the stun'-sails up to the top-sail yards, and as soon as the vessel felt them, she gave a sort of bound like a horse, and the breeze blowing more and more, she went plunging along, shaking off the foam from her bows, like foam from a bridle-bit.
"Ay, ay; no merchantmen keeps his light stun'-sails set, as near the wind as that fellow's going. He's a big chap, too a frigate, at least, by his canvas." "I do not know, sir they build such heavy corvettes now-a-days, that I should rather take her for one of them. They tell me ships are now sent to sea which mount only two-and-twenty guns, but which measure quite a thousand tons."
"There go his stun'-sails already, and a plenty of them!" Sure enough the cruiser threw out her studding-sails, had them full and drawing in five minutes, and altered her course so as to follow the Montauk.
"You must have a better chance at him by this time, for I can see the chap from off the coach-house here." "Ay, ay, sir; he's a bit nearer, certainly. I should say that craft is a ship under stun'-sails, looking to the eastward of south, and that there are caps with gold bands on her quarter-deck." "How low down can you see her?" demanded Spike, in a voice of thunder.
The director had been a Conway boy, the accountant had served four years at sea, the lawyer a fine crusted Tory, High Churchman, the best of old fellows, the soul of honour had been chief officer in the P. & O. service in the good old days when mail-boats were square-rigged at least on two masts, and used to come down the China Sea before a fair monsoon with stun'-sails set alow and aloft.
She was going large before the wind, her stun'-sails set on both sides, so that the canvas on the main-mast and fore-mast presented the appearance of majestic, tapering pyramids, more than a hundred feet broad at the base, and terminating in the clouds with the light copestone of the royals. That immense area of snow-white canvas sliding along the sea was indeed a magnificent spectacle.
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.
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