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Updated: June 28, 2025
"He makes all the youngsters lie out in the topsail-yards, and hand the canvas in fine style, ay, and black down the rigging at times too. By Jove, he's the fellow to make your kid-glove-wearing gentlemen dip their hands in the tar-bucket, and keep them there, if he sees they are in any way squeamish about it."
The squall swooped down upon us with a weird, shrieking howl, and a dash of wet that was half rain and half spray; and the next moment, with a tremendous creaking and groaning of timbers and gear, with all three topsail-yards on the caps, and with the chain bobstay half-buried in the foam that heaped itself up about our bows, away went the frigate, like a startled sea-bird, speeding down-wind upon the wings of the squall, enveloped in a sheet of rain that was more than half salt water, with the lightning flickering and darting all round her, and the thunder crashing overhead in a continuous booming roar.
The Chrysolite was close-hauled on the starboard tack, and was making good headway under a clinking breeze. She was an old-fashioned, frigate-built, full-rigged ship, such as one seldom happens on now, her quarter-galleries, chain-plates, to' gallant bulwarks, and single topsail-yards being all out of date among the ship-builders of to-day.
I doubt if many of them, on the first try, could lay out on a topsail-yard in a gale of wind without immediately falling overboard; but they don't have to lay out on topsail-yards nowadays. They do have to shoot, however; and they can shoot. Lay a gun's crew of them behind a big turret-gun and watch them make lacework of a target at 11,000 yards. The main question is, Have we the spirit to-day?
The animal came to the ship, and rearing its body more than half way out of the water, so that if our masts had been standing, his head would have been as high as our topsail-yards, looked down on deck. He then lowered his great diamond-shaped head, and thrusting it down the hatchway, seized one of the men in his teeth, plunged into the sea and disappeared.
As we flew on, we could see the breakers flying high up on our starboard bow; while ahead appeared the opening which we had before made out. The wind, it should be understood, was on our port, or larboard quarter, as it was then called. The topsail-yards bent with the pressure put upon them.
"Three guns were fired at a frigate I was on board of, from a battery, all at the same time. The three shots cut away the three topsail ties, and down came all our topsail-yards upon the cap at the same time.
I was at first disposed to regard her as English, but the enormous spread of her lower and topsail-yards convinced me, upon her nearer approach, that I was mistaken. That same peculiarity of rig was a strong argument against the assumption of her being French; and, considerably puzzled what to make of her, I sent for my glass, in order to get a clearer view of her.
The men were stamping aft, and the topsail-yards travelling up to the mast-head very fast, when they were stopped by a sudden check with the fore-topsail haulyards. "What's the matter?" said the first lieutenant, calling to me, who was at my station on the forecastle. "Something foul of the topsail-tie," I replied. "What's the matter forward?" said the captain.
Tackles were next fastened to the masts above the topsail-yards, and fastened to convenient trees, and all was in readiness to heave the vessels down as the tide left them. Roger and Harry had been busy with the rest of the crew, and, as they worked, Roger had found time to inform his friend of the peculiar occurrence which he and Martin had witnessed, and he asked Harry his opinion of it.
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