“Better call the hands, Tom!” he shouted to the first hand. “We’ll reef her.”
Tom put his head into the forecastle. The fire in the little round stove was roaring lustily; 99 and the swinging lamp filled the narrow place with warm light.
“Out with you, lads!” Tom cried. “All hands on deck t’ reef the mains’l!”
Up they tumbled; and up tumbled Archie Armstrong, and up tumbled Jimmie Grimm, and up tumbled Billy Topsail.
“Blowin’ some,” thought Archie. “Great sailin’ breeze. What’s he reefin’ for?”
The great sail was obstinate. Ease the schooner as Skipper Bill would, it was still hard for his crew of two men, three lads and a cook to grasp and confine the canvas. Meantime, the schooner lurched along, tossing her head, digging her nose into the frothy waves. A cask on the after deck broke its lashings, pursued a mad and devastating career fore and aft, and at last went spinning into the sea. Skipper Bill devoutly hoped that nothing else would get loose above or below. He cast an apprehensive glance into the darkening cloud of snow ahead. There was no promise to be descried. And to leeward the first islands of the Chunks, which had been sighted an hour ago, had disappeared in the night.
“Lively with that mains’l, lads!” Skipper Bill 100 shouted, lifting his voice above the wind. “We’ll reef the fores’l!”
The crew had been intent upon the task in hand. Not a man had yet smelled smoke. And they continued to wrestle with the obstinate sail, each wishing, heartily enough, to get the dirty-weather job well done, and to return to the comfort of the forecastle. It was the cook who first paused to sniff––to sniff again––and to fancy he smelled smoke. But a gust of wind at that moment bellied his fold of the sail, and he forgot the dawning suspicion in an immediate tussle to reduce the disordered canvas. A few minutes more of desperate work and the mainsail was securely reefed; but these were supremely momentous intervals, during which the fate of the First Venture was determined.
“All stowed, sir!” Archie Armstrong shouted to the skipper.
“Get at that fores’l, then!” was the order.