I had been on deck three quarters of an hour when, feeling the wind very cold, I dived into my cabin for a shawl to wrap round my neck.
I had hardly left the cuddy door to return, when I heard a loud cry from the forecastle, and both hands roared out simultaneously, "A sail right ahead!"
Coxon walked quickly forward to the poop-rail to try to see the vessel to windward. Then he went over to the other side and peered under the mainsail; after which he said, "I see nothing. Where is she?"
I shouted through my hands, "On which bow is she?"
"Right ahead!" came the reply.
"There was a short pause, and then one of the men roared out, "Hard over! we're upon her! She's cutter rigged! she's a smack!"
"Hard a-port! hard a-port!" bawled Coxon.
I saw the spokes of the wheel fly round, but almost at the same moment, I felt a sudden shock—an odd kind of thud, the effect of which upon my senses was to produce the impression of a sudden lull in the wind.
"God Almighty!" bellowed a voice, "we've run her down!"
In a second I had bounded to the weather-side of the poop and looked over, and what I saw sliding rapidly past, was a mast and a dark-coloured sail, which in the daylight would probably be red, stretched flat upon the wilderness of foam which our ship was sweeping off her sides. Upon this ghastly white ground the sail and mast were distinctly outlined—for a brief moment only—they vanished even as I watched, swallowed up in the seething water. And then all overhead the sails of the ship began to thunder, and the rigging quivered and jerked as though it must snap.