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Updated: June 15, 2025
At the firing of the gun on board the Sea Foam, they ran up their jibs and got a good start. The wind was west, a lively breeze, but not heavy. Each yacht carried her large gaff-topsail and the balloon-jib. The course was about forty miles, the return from the rock being a beat dead to windward. Robert and Donald each did his best, and the Maud came in twelve minutes ahead of the Skylark.
Accordingly, having advised Bob of what I had seen and of my intention, we took in the spinnaker and gaff-topsail, lowered the topmast, and then hauled up for the stranger.
The cutter wearied not in her waltz; but, whether she felt the want of a partner, or the power of the wind, I know not; for when the pilot had lighted his pipe, and given his soul to its soporific ward, she darted unexpectedly out of the circling haven, and ceased not in her flight until the first wave of the Ocean leaped up against her bow with so much rude impetuosity that her hull staggered under its force, and her gaff-topsail shook with anger at such lack of gentleness.
It was the Falkland group of barren and desolate islands in the vicinity of Cape Horn. As we had been expecting, the wind now drew round from the westward, fresh, though not so much so as to prevent our showing a jib-headed gaff-topsail to it.
There is one green hand in the crew, Harrison by name, a clumsy-looking country boy, mastered, I imagine, by the spirit of adventure, and making his first voyage. In the light baffling airs the schooner had been tacking about a great deal, at which times the sails pass from one side to the other and a man is sent aloft to shift over the fore- gaff-topsail.
Two nights after this, the wind still holding favourable, though rather fresher, so that our spars had as much as they could do, notwithstanding our preventer backstays, to bear the strain of our enormous spinnaker and balloon gaff-topsail, and the little Water Lily flying along at as our patent log told us over thirteen knots, we dashed past a half- consumed hencoop, a few charred pieces of planking, and some half-burnt spars, all of which had the appearance of having been but a short time in the water.
During the old pilot's meditation, D had mechanically taken his position aft, close to the helmsman on the weather quarter. More fairly, the cutter now started a second time, and, standing well up, promised to fetch the very centre of the passage. The gaff-topsail shook. "Keep her well full," said D to the helmsman. The man kept her half a point more free.
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