The vessel’s topsails, as I have mentioned before, were already cast loose from the gaskets and her courses hung in the brails, while she was lying in the stream, heading almost due south and facing the entrance of the harbour, into which the tide was still running and, consequently, keeping her cable as taut as a fiddle-string; but now, on the captain’s command causing the hands to man the topsail halliards and run up the yards to the mast-head, the ponderous folds of canvas expanded with the wind, which was still to the nor’-east and blowing from aft, and the ship, in spite of the incoming tide, surged up to her anchor, bringing it right under her fore foot, thus slackening the strain on the cable.
Another party of the crew, meanwhile, under the superintendence of the boatswain, had manned the windlass, bringing in the cable slack with a “slip-slap” and “click-clack” of the pall, as the winch went round, the moment the skipper’s warning cry, “Hands up anchor,” was heard from aft.
“Hove short, sir,” then sang out the boatswain.
“Up with it, then, men,” returned the skipper; and in another minute, for we were only in some six-fathom water, the anchor-stock showed itself above the surface and was run up to the cathead.
Now, free from the ground, the bows of the vessel began to rise and fall as she curtsied politely to the stream, which was just on the turn, preparing to bid adieu to Cardiff harbour; so, Captain Billings himself jumped from where he had been standing, by the pilot’s side, to the wheel, making the spokes rapidly fly round until the helm was hard up, putting the ship before the wind and steering towards the mouth of the harbour ahead.
“Sheet home!” was the next order; and, with a “yo-heave-ho,” the clews of the topsails were hauled out to the end of the yards, while the clewgarnet blocks rattled as the main sheet was brought aft; then, the yards were braced round a bit to the starboard and the vessel headed out into the Channel, with the wind on her quarter, on the port tack.
“Hoist away the jib!” shouted out Captain Billings, on this much being achieved; when the Esmeralda began to gather way, the bubbles now floating past astern as she commenced to move through the water—at first slowly, and then with more speed, as the sails, already set, filled and drew.
“Look smart there, men, and run away with those halliards,” echoed the mate, repeating the captain’s order anent the jib; and the Esmeralda, being now well under control of her helm, a picked hand came aft to take Captain Billings’ place at the wheel, of which he had retained charge until now, while another man was put in the main chains with the lead, heaving it at intervals and chanting out the soundings in a monotonous sing-song drawl of “By the mark, four,” and so on, until we reached six-fathom water, and then “The deep nine!”
All this time we had been heading over to the Somersetshire shore; but when we were a couple of miles or so out from Cardiff, the pilot told the skipper that it was time to come about, as we had got into the proper fairway of the Channel and our course now should be west instead of south.
Captain Billings didn’t need a second hint as to what he should do.