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Updated: May 17, 2025
Very early yesterday little two-masted smacks began to arrive from neighboring outports, and the tiny harbor was crowded with them. They fluttered out all their poor little bits of bunting, gaily, and the visitors wore their best clothes. I doubt if so great a holiday ever took place before in this part of the island.
She was a schooner of the common two-masted Pacific type, but she was comporting herself in a manner uncommon on the Pacific, or any other ocean. Even as Barnett spoke, she heeled well over, and came rushing up into the wind, where she stood with all sails shaking. Slowly she paid off again, bearing away from them. Now she gathered full headway, yet edged little by little to windward again.
Their eyes shone, their teeth clenched, the sweat streamed from their naked bodies. They might have been slaves chained to the thwarts of a trireme. Just ahead of them lay at anchor the only other ship beside our own in port, a two-masted schooner, the Gladys E. Wilden, out of Boston.
We had first to hire a proper vessel, a two-masted vigilinga twenty-seven feet long, with a flat prow and great breadth of beam and fitted to live in heavy seas; for, although our voyage was only a river trip, there were vast sea-like expanses of water to traverse. It was not decked over, but had two arched awnings formed of strong wickerwork, and thatched with palm leaves.
"By Kin-fu-tzi!" exclaimed the admiral, a few seconds later, "that craft is very much nearer than I thought from the appearance of her rocket not more than seven miles away, at the utmost. She is a two-masted, one-funnelled steamer, and, I'm almost certain, is a man-o'-war. Now, what should she be doing just there?
From one of my boat's crew I learnt that the Flora had either seen or been boarded a couple of days ago by a two-masted long-funnelled steamer, supposed by the Master to have been a Confederate, though showing Yankee colours. Wednesday, September 16th.
This time there were three ships in place of the one; or two ships, and one of those old Dutch, flattish-bottomed, round-sided, two-masted crafts they called galiots. The number of ships was trebled that was well; but the number of souls was doubled, and eighteen hundred wanderers from home were stowed in the three vessels. These changes made new farewells and separations.
In the absence of particular information, I suppose the ships to be small caravels of between fifty and sixty tons, and the brigantines much smaller, open, flat-bottomed boats with but one mast although a modern brigantine is a two-masted vessel. The castellano was valued at two dollars and fifty-six cents, but the purchasing power of that sum was much greater then than now.
At last he reached a two-masted vessel, in reality a brig, somewhat larger than the rest, but her deck was black with coal-dust, and everything about her had a dark, grimy look. A rough, black-bearded, strongly-built man, better dressed than some of those he had spoken to, was stepping on shore by the plank which formed a communication between the vessel and the quay.
But before they could begin, while there was still wind enough to curl the head of an occasional sea into foam, a speck which had been showing on the shortened horizon to windward, when the schooner lifted out of the hollows, took form and identity a two-masted steamer, with English colors, union down, at the gaff.
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