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Towards evening, however, it came on to blow harder than before; so that at last we were obliged to up-helm and run for shelter into harbour; but just as we were bearing up, a sea struck the cutter, carried away our stern-boat, and stove in one of those on our quarter.
And after we had been hove-to for twenty-six hours she scared the skipper so badly that he decided to up-helm and try whether she wouldn't do better at running before it. Well, we watched for a `smooth, but it didn't seem to come; and then, while we were still waiting, a sea came bearing down upon us that looked as big as a mountain.
Mr Pullen, the master, kept glancing to windward in a significant manner. "What do you think of it, master?" asked Captain Cranley. "Why, sir, the sooner that we up-helm, and run into port, the better for the ship and ourselves," replied Mr Pullen. "There's no use straining a vessel till every timber in her creaks and groans with pain, that's my opinion."
This was the sort of sea to find out for Leslie the weak points in his structure, if it had any; and for the next half-hour while "carrying-on," and driving his craft full tilt against the sea under the heavy pressure of her enormous unreefed sails he watched his craft carefully and anxiously, ready at the first sign of weakness to up-helm and run back to the shelter of the lagoon.
"I thought no good of her when I saw her up-helm and run away from us as she did," said a third, a Yankee, who was one of the oracles of the crew. Van Graoul laughed. "We shall soon get a sight of her again," he said; "she will get becalmed among the trees, or will find the wind baffling, when we, with our fore and aft sails shall have the advantage."
The French captain availed himself of this interval, and gave the Tremendous a whole broadside, by which she was so disabled as to become an immoveable log on the water. The Frenchman up-helm, and off he started. The commodore, at last, got his ship's broadside to bear, and nearly tore her out of the water.
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