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Updated: May 22, 2025
The wind being at east, the top-sails were handed; and we stood northward, under our courses, hoping to get clear of the ice before night. But finding rather more than less, we tacked to the Southward, which was found unproductive of any change.
I have seen there the boom of a trading schooner brush the grasses on the river-bank as she came before a southerly wind, and the haymakers stop and almost crick their necks staring up at her top-sails.
"Hold yer wind, Paddy," shouted the men, who paused for a moment to watch the result of the race. "Mind your timbers, Mivins! Back your top-sails, O'Riley; mind how he yaws!" Then there was a momentary silence of breathless expectation. The two men seemed about to meet with a shock that would annihilate both, when Mivins bounded to one side like an indiarubber ball.
He could not bring a gun to bear, having no forward ports that served him, till we fell off again, and it was then that Captain Pearson asked, in that strange stillness, if he had struck. Jones answered, 'I have not begun to fight. And so it proved. Our sails were filled, he backed his top-sails, and we wore short round.
When the Dover weighed, the admiral's upper sail was not visible from her tops, though the Warspite's hull had not yet disappeared from her deck. She left the fleet, or the portions of it that still remained at anchor, with her fore-course set, and hauled by the wind, under double-reefed top-sails, a single reef in her main-sail, and with her main-topgallant sail set over its proper sail.
A bright moonlight, silvering the calm and beautiful landscape, displayed the vessels of D'Aulney, riding at anchor below the fort, while a thin mist, so common in that climate, began slowly to weave around their hulks, till the tall masts and white top-sails were alone visible, floating, like a fairy fleet, in the transparent atmosphere.
Our men were in such a consternation, that not a man on board the ship had presence of mind to apply to the proper duty of a sailor, except friend William; and had he not run very nimbly, and with a composure that I am sure I was not master of, to let go the fore-sheet, set in the weather-brace of the fore-yard, and haul down the top-sails, we had certainly brought all our masts by the board, and perhaps have been overwhelmed in the sea.
Instantly I began to work might and main at my cumbrous tackle for shortening sail, and in the course of an hour and a half had the most of it reduced the top-sail yards down on the caps, the top-sails clewed up, the sheets hauled in, the main and fore peaks lowered, and the flying-jib down.
So small was the Parki, that one hand could brace the main-yard; and a very easy thing it was, even to hoist the small top-sails; for after their first clumsy attempt to perform that operation by hand, they invariably led the halyards to the windlass, and so managed it, with the utmost facility. Still many days passed and the Parki yet floated.
At six o'clock this morning I mounted the poop and made as keen a scrutiny as I could of everything on board. Everything appeared as usual. The Chancellor was run- ning on the larboard tack, and carried low-sails, top-sails, and gallant-sails. Well braced she was; and under a fresh, but not uneasy breeze, was making no less than eleven knots an hour.
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