"Well, sir, when the steamer seen us a-comin' she slowed down and then stopped, and we shot alongside. Then Dick stood up in the starn-sheets and lifted his hat to the officer at the gangway — I can recollect it as well as if it were yesterday, and it were away back in 1846 or '47, — and says he:
'Captain Sir John Britton's compliments, of the American Swallow-Tail line packet ship Constitution, bound from Liverpool to New York, and he wishes to know if you can give him a late paper or two?'
"Oh, Holy Moses! you ought to have heerd that Frenchman go on, fust in English and then in French. 'Curse your Yankee impudence,' says he, 'how dare you stop one of His Majesty's mail steamers on the high seas on sich a frivolous pretext?' and then he went off into French, which Dick couldn't understand a word of. The Frenchman had rung the bell for to go ahead, and away she went, sendin' a shower of water into our boat from her propeller as she went on.
"Dick were wild. 'Out oars,' says he, 'and give way strong. If I can git aboard of that ship, I'll lick that there Frenchman within a inch of his life.' Well, we pulled, but of course we didn't gain any on him, and we soon giv it up. Dick stood up in the starn-sheets and cursed the French officer as long as he could hear, and long after, and then he settled down in the starn-sheets and we pulled back to the ship. But all the way back Dick puffed and swelled in a awful way and fit to bust hisself. 'A — frog-eatin' French son of sea-cook,' Dick kept mutterin' to hisself, 'to dare for to talk to me like that — to me, Richard Hewitt, esq., mate of a American packet, as was a sailor afore that — Frenchman know'd how for to knot a rope-yarn. He shall be hammered if I have to go to France for to do it. I shall catch him in New York yit, and when I do — . To think of me, Mr. R. Hewitt, esq., being treated like a loblolly boy by a brass-bound beggar like that. One of His Majesty's mail steamers. Hey! One of His Majesty's steamers! Give the old Constitution a to' gallant breeze a p'int free and if she couldn't beat the life out of that whirlygig thing I'd break her up for firewood.' Well, Dick kep' agoin' on in this way all the way back to the ship. While we was alongside of the Frenchman some of the passengers had pitched a newspaper or two into the boat, and Dick took these and pitched 'em among the crowd of passengers, and givin' orders for to hyst in the boat, he went onto the port side of the deck and walked there till dark. Every once in a while he'd stop and square off as if he had somebody afore him a pitchin' into 'em, and then he'd resume his walk. Whether he ever met that Frenchman or not I never heerd, but if he did you may depend on it there were a Frenchman whaled."
THE GALE
Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
(From "Two Years Before The Mast")
WE were now off Point Conception, — the Cape Horn of California, where, the sailors say, it begins to blow the first of January, and blows until the last of December. Toward the latter part of the afternoon, however, the regular northwest wind, as usual, set in, which brought in our studding-sails, and gave us the chance of beating round the Point, which we were now just abreast of, and which stretched off into the Pacific, high, rocky, and barren, forming the central point of the coast for hundreds of miles north and south. A cap-full of wind will be a bag-full here, and before night our royals were furled, and the ship was laboring hard under her top-gallant-sails. At eight bells our watch went below, leaving her with as much sail as she could stagger under, the water flying over the forecastle at every plunge. It was evidently blowing harder, but then there was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun had gone down bright. We had been below but a short time, before we had the usual premonitions of a coming gale, — seas washing over the whole forward part of the vessel, and her bows beating against them with a force and sound like the driving of piles. The watch, too, seemed very busy trampling about decks, and singing out at the ropes. A sailor can tell, by the sound, what sail is coming in; and, in a short time, we heard the top-gallant-sails come in, one after another, and then the flying jib. This seemed to ease her a good deal, and we were fast going off to the land of Nod, when — bang, bang, bang — on the scuttle, and 'All hands, reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths ; and, it not being very cold weather, we had nothing extra to put on, and were soon on deck. I shall never forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear, and rather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling with an intense brightness, and as far as the eye could reach there was not a cloud to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter could not have painted so clear a sky. There was not a speck upon it. Yet it was blowing great guns from the northwest. When you can see a cloud to windward, you feel that there is a place for the wind to come from; but here it seemed to come from nowhere. No person could have told from the heavens, by their eyesight alone, that it was not a still summer's night. One reef after another we took in the topsails, and before we could get them hoisted up we heard a sound like a short, quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of the bolt-rope. We got the topsails set, and the fragments of the jib stowed away, and the fore topmast staysail set in its place, when the great mainsail gaped open, and the sail ripped from head to foot. "Lay up on that main yard and furl the sail, before it blows to tatters!" shouted the captain; and in a moment we were up, gathering the remains of it upon the yard. We got it wrapped round the yard, and passed gaskets over it as snugly as possible, and were just on deck again, when, with another loud rent, which was heard throughout the ship, the fore topsail, which had been double-reefed, split in two athwartships, just below the reef -band, from earing to earing. Here again it was — down yard, haul out reef -tackles, and lay out upon the yard for reefing. By hauling the reef-tackle's chock-a-block we took the strain from the other earings, and passing the close-reef earing, and knotting the points carefully, we succeeded in setting the sail, close reefed.
We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear "Go below the watch!" when the main royal worked loose from the gaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping, and shaking the mast like a wand. Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come in or be cut adrift, or the mast would be snapped short off. All the light hands in the starboard watch were sent up one after another, but they could do nothing with it. At length, John, the tall Frenchman, the head of the starboard watch (and a better sailor never stepped upon a deck), sprang aloft, and, by the help of his long arms and legs, succeeded, after a hard struggle, — the sail blowing over the yard-arm to leeward, and the skysail adrift directly over his head, — in smothering it and frapping it with long pieces of sinnet. He came very near being blown or shaken from the yard several times, but he was a true sailor, every finger a fish-hook. Having made the sail snug, he prepared to send the yard down, which was a long and difficult job; for, frequently, he was obliged to stop, and hold on with all his might for several minutes, the ship pitching so as to make it impossible to do anything else at that height. The yard at length came down safe, and,
after it, the fore and mizzen royal yards were sent down. All hands were then sent aloft, and for an hour or two we were hard at work, making the booms well fast, unreeving the studding-sail and royal and skysail gear, getting rolling-ropes on the yard, setting up the weather breast-backstays, and making other preparations for a storm. It was a fine night for a gale; just cool and bracing enough for quick work, without being cold, and as bright as day. It was sport to have a gale in such weather as this. Yet it blew like a hurricane. The wind seemed to come with a spite, an edge to it, which threatened to scrape us off the yards. The force of the wind was greater than I had ever felt it before; but darkness, cold, and wet are the worst parts of a storm, to a sailor.