NEXT day, (Sunday,) a fresh north-west breeze blew all day, and we made but little progress toward New York. The weather was pleasant, and the ship did not leak so much as before. The sailors were busy all day, repairing the damages, as best they could, securing the rigging and so forth; the carpenter nailed some boards on the almost bare framework of the bulwarks, made another inspection of the hold, and got some of the leaks stopped: especially did he secure one of the stern planks, that was so loose that a man might have pulled it off with his hands.
On Monday morning, the sea was perfectly calm. Not the slightest breeze stirred, the surface of the water was glassy, and scarcely any swell was perceptible. [They have swells at sea, as well as on land.]
By and by, as we laid perfectly motionless, we saw a steamer coming from the southward, and the captain ran up his “ensign,” as a signal that he wanted to communicate with her. It was the Moro Castle, from Havana for New York. As she passed astern of us, within half a cable’s length, Captain Collins called out:
“This is the Brewster, leaking badly and returning in distress! Please report me in New York!”
“Ay, ay,” replied the captain of the steamer, as she rushed by.
On Monday evening, a stiff north-west breeze sprung up again, as though determined to keep us away from New York harbor; and it lasted a whole week.
On Thursday, the twenty-eighth, after we had been tacking about for three days without gaining much distance, a pilot-boat came dancing out to us, over the rough waves, and a pilot left her in a yawl and came aboard the Brewster.
“Have you any Newspapers?” was the question the captain and I asked him, in a breath, as he came up over the bulwark.
I shall never forget the anxiety and impatience with which we asked this question. We had been absent from the world, as it were, about three weeks: and so full of terror and danger had the period been that it seemed like a moderate life-time. I almost fancied that my country might have undergone a revolution during my absence, and that I might find it necessary, on going ashore, to bend my solitary knee to a crowned monarch. However, I saw no indications of any such state of things, in the World, Herald and Times with which the pilot responded to our earnest inquiries. Things seemed to be going on about as usual in Gotham, and the remainder of the United States: the markets appeared to be good; whisky, cotton and iron were quoted at fair figures: while the usual healthy number of fires, accidents and murders were reported in the proper columns.
On Monday morning, the first day of April, having been all this time beating about in front of the harbor, we found ourselves becalmed again, about seventy miles from New York. The sky was heavily clouded, a dull, damp, misty rain fell, and the barometer was low. Every thing augured ugly weather. Soundings were taken, which indicated that we were in fifty fathoms water. Other sails could be seen on all sides.