“Sheer off you boats there!”
“Get the gangway ladder in-board.”
“Loose the inner jib, one of you!”
“A hand aft to the wheel!”
To see young Holdsworth now was to see a sailor, with a voice like a gale of wind, the whole great ship and her thousand complications of spars, ropes, sails, packed, so to speak, like a toy in the palm of his hand.
The skipper was below; the pilot was lord and master now, and Holdsworth watched his face for orders.
Soon the cable was up and down, the anchor lifted, and some hands left the windlass to make sail. The tide had got the ship, and she was floating almost imperceptibly past a large American vessel that had brought-up the evening before. A few boats followed; some turned and made for Gravesend, the inmates standing up and waving their hats and handkerchiefs.
By this time the anchor was catted, and all hands quitted the forecastle to make sail. Then you might hear cries of “Sheet home!” from the air; down fell great spaces of canvas like avalanches of snow; chains rattled through blocks; fore and aft songs and choruses were raised and continued until silenced by the order “Belay!” The yards rose slowly up the polished masts and stretched the canvas tight as drum-skins. The men on board the Yankee crowded her forecastle and gave the Britisher a cheer as she passed. Amid the songs of the men, the piping of the boatswain and his mates, and the noisy commands of the pilot, the “Meteor” burst into a cloud of canvas, chipped a white wave out of the blue river, and went ahead like a yacht in a racing match.
The breeze freshened as the river widened. The decks were quiet now, the ropes coiled down clear for running, and everything hauled taut and snug. At two o’clock she was foaming along under royals and flying-jib, whisking past colliers dragging their main channels through the water as if they were drowning flies struggling for the land; overhauling smart schooners and ships as big as herself, and making the land on either side of her dwindle down and down into flat marshy country.
The pilot, pompous to the last extremity, with bow legs and moist eyes, strutted fore and aft the poop, sometimes calling an order to the man at the wheel, and constantly looking aloft, ahead, and around him. The passengers lounged about the deck or hung over the side, watching the foaming water rush past them, and almost losing—those of them, at least, who were leaving their homes—their sadness in the sense of exhilaration begotten by the swift speeding of the vessel through the glory and freshness of the summer afternoon.