“That looks like a squall coming down, sir”—he began. But Captain Blyth had no time to attend to him just then; he saw that there was not a moment to be lost, and turning his back unceremoniously upon Mr Willoughby he shouted:
“Stand by your topsail-halliards here, the watch! Hurry up, my lads, or we shall lose the sticks! Let run, fore and aft!”
The men, who saw what was coming, and had been expecting the call, sprang at once to their stations, let go the halliards, and then helped the revolving yards down by manning the topsail-clewlines, by which means the three topsails were snugly close-reefed by the moment that the squall burst upon them. There was no time to do more or Captain Blyth would have taken the courses off the ship. As it was she had to bear them; and so heavy was the squall that during its height the vessel was compelled to run dead before it. Her head was, however, brought to the southward the moment that it was safe to do so, and away she went like a frightened thing, tearing through the surges with her lee gunwale under. The first fury of the squall was spent in about a quarter of an hour, but it continued to blow with great violence until noon, when the gale broke and the crew were able to take a pull of a few feet upon the topsail-halliards. By eight bells in the afternoon watch the ship was under whole topsails once more, with a clear sea all round her and a rapidly clearing sky; and at ten o’clock that same evening, when Captain Blyth entered the saloon, after personally superintending the setting of the topgallant-sails, he announced not only that there was every prospect of a fine night and a steady breeze, but also that he believed they had caught the south-east trades.
Chapter Five.
The derelict barque.
The next morning demonstrated the correctness of Captain Blyth’s surmise; for daylight found them with the breeze still steady at about east by south, and so fresh that they were compelled to keep all their skysails and the mizen-royal stowed. Needless to say, everybody was delighted at having slipped through the Doldrums so easily; even the chief-mate almost allowed himself now and then to be betrayed into an expression of dawning amiability; and, as for Captain Blyth, his exuberance of spirits threatened at times to pass all bounds. He believed it quite impossible that the Southern Cross could now cross the line in less than three days, at least, after himself; and the way in which the Flying Cloud, against a fair amount of head sea and on a taut bowline, was steadily reeling off her eight, nine, and sometime even ten knots per hour, with her really extraordinary weatherliness, quite convinced him that he could beat his antagonist in any weather which would permit him to show his topgallant-sails to it.
This state of general satisfaction and good humour was at its height, when about ten o’clock on that same morning, a man who was at work on the weather fore-topsail-yard-arm hailed the deck with:
“On deck, there! There is a wreck, or something like it, broad on our weather-beam, and about nine mile off.”