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Updated: June 8, 2025
With a fair wind they might, with all canvas set mainsail, foresail, jib, and fore-topsail make Rozel Bay within two hours and a quarter. All seemed well for a brief half-hour.
Little snarled himself up in the gasket on the fore-topsail yard, and dropped off, as though he had fallen, though he clung to the rope, and was brought up with a jerk ten or twelve feet below the spar. Some of his gang, believing he had really fallen, screamed, and the attention of the whole crew was drawn off from their duty.
I had not as yet been ordered to perform this duty, but Mark was as active as any one. He and Tom were on the lee fore-topsail yard-arm. Two reefs had already been taken in when the sail had to be closely reefed. It was now quite dark. The operation was being performed, when there was a cry from forward of "A man overboard!"
His men urged on the boat to their utmost strength; he felt a hope that he might reach her, when her fore-topsail was let fall, and sheeted home.
Still he could not bring himself to do so while the barque held on, thus allowing her to effect her escape from us a second time assuming, of course, that she really was, as we very strongly suspected, our former acquaintance; it was therefore with a feeling of considerable satisfaction that we shortly afterwards saw her start her fore-topsail sheets with the evident intention of clewing up the sail, if possible, preparatory to heaving-to.
We clewed down, and hauled out the reef-tackles again, and close-reefed the fore-topsail, and furled the main, and hove her to on the starboard tack. Here was an end to our fine prospects. We made up our minds to head winds and cold weather; sent down the royal yards, and unrove the gear, but all the rest of the top hamper remained aloft, even to the sky-sail masts and studding-sail booms.
The boats had disappeared from the davits, and a clean sweep seemed to have been made of everything movable. Forward was a big gap in the bulwark and, as the brig met the great waves, masses of green water poured in through this, and swept along the deck waist deep. The brig was under the same sail as before, except that she now showed a closely-reefed fore-topsail.
A bath, an early breakfast, and I went to work once more, the bending and setting, of the fore-topsail being my first job. I finished this about noon, and considered that I had done very well when at dusk I had added to my spread of canvas the standing jib and spanker.
After running along for some time under the fore-topsail, triple-reefed, and scarce in sight of land, Captain Nicholls cast anchor; and next morning to his great surprise, found high rocks so close astern, that he durst not veer away a cable.
The wind increased, and we soon had to close-reef the fore-topsail, the only sail we could carry; then down came the rain in huge drops, or rather in sheets which wetted us as thoroughly as if we had jumped overboard, and so deluged the deck that had it not run out at the scuppers as the vessel rolled from side to side the water would have been up to our ankles in a few minutes.
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