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The port had seen nothing like her for power and speed; her skysail yards soared far above the other shipping; the cut of her snowy canvas was faultless; all clumsy, needless tophamper had been done away with; and she appeared to be the last word in design and construction, as lean and fine and spirited as a race-horse in training.
"The ship I saw presented a very different appearance to that reflection of ours! She was full- rigged, I told you, sir, and though her canvas was torn and she looked a bit knocked about in the matter of her tophamper, she was as unlike our old Star of the North as a sailing vessel is unlike a steamer!" "She might have been a derelict."
From this point of vantage, it flew out fair above all our sails and tophamper, visible all round the compass and telling the French corvette, still curvetting and prancing abreast of us and showing her bright copper sheathing as she rolled, that we had at last made out her signal and were waiting to learn what she had to say.
The Dolphin, therefore, despite her beautiful model and the reduction of her tophamper, was beginning to make exceedingly bad weather of it, frequently burying herself to her foremast, and careening so heavily that during some of her lee rolls it was impossible to maintain one's footing on deck except by holding on to something.
"The ship's just sent up our recall, and she's bearing away now to pick us up to leeward when we cast off from here, sir." "Yes, my man, I see, and I notice, also, she has sent down her topgallants and taken in another reef," returned Mr Jellaby, proceeding to work his way back amidships to those we had left there, wading through the water and wreckage and tophamper strewing the waist.
"Well, lads," said Mr. Stevenson, accosting the men, "what think you of this state of things? Will the good ship weather it?" "Nae fear o' her, sir," replied one confidently, "she's light and new; it'll tak' a heavy sea to sink her." "Ay," observed another, "and she's got little hold o' the water, good ground-tackle, and no tophamper; she'll weather anything, sir."
But you let some one try to plunk acrost my bows when I'm on the starboard tack, and have got right of way, well, more or less tophamper is goin' to be carried away and it won't be mine." "What have you done, Aaron?" she inquired with timorous solicitude.
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