“It ware pretty bad when we started inshore, with the glass a-fallin’ an’ the sky like the inside of a lead pot. Then came the breeze and big northeast sea what stopped us.
“We couldn’t push her through that sea. It was more’n common heavy, and even with the whole mainsail on her she wouldn’t do a thing but rear up on her hind legs an’ throw herself into it so she’d go out o’ sight to her foremast. Man, she ware an’ old boat, an’ if she’d kept the racket up she’d have split in two!
“We could see Cape Henry light by dark, but it warn’t no use, so we wore around before it ware too late an’ got the foresail an’ jib stowed safe. Then we came to on the port tack, lowering down the mainsail and reefing it to balance the bit o’ staysail forrads. ’Twas a piece o’ work takin’ in that mainsail, an’ that’s the truth. You may search me if it didn’t fair blow the hair off yer head by this time. I don’t mind a bit o’ breeze, Cap’n, but when I say it ware blowin’ then, it aint more’n half the truth. It ware fair howlin’.
“We got the sail on the boom, and then that same boom took charge for twenty red-hot minutes while she threw it from port to starboard—an’ all hands hangin’ onto the mainsheet tryin’ to get it in when it slacked with the throw.
“‘Balance-reef her,’ says the old man, an’ we lashed her down, givin’ about ten feet o’ leach rope hoisted taut with the peak downhaul fast to windward. Then everything was made snug, an’ with the bit o’ staysail hauled to the mast we hung on to see what would happen next.”
Buck rose for a minute and gazed steadily to the southward as though he had seen something. Then he settled down again.
“Me? I was mate, you know. I’d been with Richards over a year. He had his wife an’ daughter aboard that trip—yessir—about as fine—she was about seventeen.”
A sea struck the vessel while Buck was looking to leeward, but he paid no attention to it as the spray filled his collar. He seemed to be so deeply occupied in some object that I began to get a bit nervous, and reached for the glasses to try and pick out a new danger. But he evidently saw nothing, for he went on slowly after a bit.
“There were six of us men and a little coon boy in the galley. It gave us three men in a watch, an’ that ware enough. I saw we were goin’ to the south’ard fast, the sea was northerly yet, but the wind was working fast to the eastward and we waren’t reaching off a little bit. She was heavy with lumber an’ goin’ sideways like a crab—not shoving her nose ahead like we are now. It was dead to leeward, and you know how that is to the north’ard of Core Bank or Lookout.
“The old man had the wheel fast hard down and was standin’ there watchin’ her take them seas. It was growing dark an’ them fellers from the Gulf looked ugly. They just wiped her clean from end to end, roarin’ over her an’ smotherin’ everything.