A sense of expectation seemed to pervade the very ship herself as she stood upright, with her dim canvas flapping in the darkness above.
The distant murmur grew more defined, and took such a tone as you may hear in small sharp rain falling at a distance upon leaves. Then out of the murky horizon some clouds came rolling—long, attenuated shadows, resembling visionary arms clutching at the stars. The murmur approached; the clouds, swinging along the sky, formed into compact groups. Hark to the quick hissing of the water lashed by the wind!
In a moment the sails were round and hard, the ship with her port-chains under water, and the wind screeching fiercely over the ebony surface of the sea and whitening it with foam.
The captain was on the poop, holding on to the main-topgallant backstay, and shrieking orders like one possessed. It was, indeed, briefly, a case of “Let go everything!” Under full topsail, foresail, staysail, and jibs, the ship was too heavily weighted for the surprising violence of the wind, and was powerless to right herself. But every order given was the right one. And now you heard the deep tones of Holdsworth’s powerful voice mingling with the agitated commands of the skipper, while yards came rushing down upon the caps, and sails banged and roared aloft, and men shouted lustily about the decks, and the sea fled in cataracts of foam under the vessel’s bows.
A time of deep excitement, but scarcely of suspense—there was too much hurrying for that.
There would have been something incredible to an inexperienced landsman in the sight of the dark figures swarming up the shrouds to give battle to the wild array of canvas which groaned and bellowed like a dozen thunder-storms in the sky—a spectacle of human pluck not to be realized, or in the faintest degree appreciated, by those who have not beheld it. The night black; the yards slanting so that the extremity of the mainyard touched the water; the footing upon those yards a thin line which must be felt for by the feet; the canvas, loosened by the lowering of the yard, bellied by the force of the wind many feet above the heads of the reefers, and presenting to their hands a surface of iron; and the three masts quivering under the shocks and convulsions of the sails!
All hands were at work now, and there were men enough to reef both big topsails at once, while others over their heads furled the topgallant-sails. Holdsworth had been one of the first to spring up the main-rigging; he knew the value of every pair of hands in that moment of danger; and away—active, daring, his hands and arms like steel—he clambered for the weather-earing. But the boatswain was before him, so he made for the lee yard-arm.
Figure a smooth spar, forty-five feet long, sloping at a height of as many feet to the water’s surface, the said surface not being a mill-pond, but a sheet of foam; figure a pitch-dark night, a line stretched along the yard down which you must slide to the extremity, a sail weighing half-a-dozen tons banging at your head and your feet, and doing its utmost to throw you; then, having reached the extremity of the yard, figure your legs thrown across it as you might bestride a horse, beneath you the foaming sea, almost at right angles the inclined deck of the ship, a long stone’s-throw distant—a deep darkness everywhere, save where a wave, breaking massively, flings out a phosphorescent light and deepens the blackness of its own chasm—while the gale yells about your ears, and blinds you with spray that stings like hail!
Figure this, and then you will very faintly realize what “taking the lee-earing” in a gale at sea means.
The cries of the men aloft, and the beating of the canvas, sounded like an unearthly contest in mid-air; but they ceased presently, and then the hands came hurrying down the rigging and fell to the halyards. Holdsworth sprang on to the poop, his cap gone, his hair blown about his eyes, and roared out orders, while the captain, more easy in his mind about his spars, went aft and hung about the binnacle, watching the compass often.