After crossing the line “Sail ho!” was shouted from the masthead. We steered towards her. The stranger proved to be an English brig bound from Brazil to Liverpool. The wind being light our captains exchanged visits, and Medley, I, and others wrote home by her. When in the latitude of the River Plate preparations were made for bad weather, as the winter of that region was approaching. The long royal-masts were sent down and replaced by stump topgallant masts, the flying jib-boom, and the studding-sail booms were also sent down, and all the boats, except one, were got in and secured, and the hatches were battened down, and everything else was done to make the ship light aloft. Some of the men thought the captain over careful, but it was soon shown that he was right.
“We shall have it before long, thick and strong,” I heard him remark to the first mate, though at the time there was scarcely a breath of wind. “We’ll stow the mainsail, and close reef the topsails.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the mate, and the hands were sent aloft to perform the operation. Still an hour or more passed away, and we continued on our course.
“The old man is croaking again,” growled out Dan Hogan.
“Belay the slack there, mate. The captain keeps his weather eye open, which is more than some aboard this ship do,” said Eben Dredge. “What do you think of those black clouds out there?”
“Maybe there’s a little wind in them,” answered Hogan.
“A little do you say!” exclaimed Dredge. “See, here it comes to show us whether there’s a little or not.”
As he spoke the wind struck the ship like the blow of a mighty hammer right ahead. She gathered stern way and some of the after dead-lights being open the cabin was half filled with water. Had we been under more sail, the ship might possibly have gone down or her masts would have been carried away. I rushed forward to call the carpenter and his mate, and we soon had the dead-lights closed. While I was afterwards engaged with the steward in swabbing up the cabin and putting things to rights we felt the ship give some tremendous rolls.
“Hillo! what for come ober her now?” exclaimed Domingo, my companion, who was a black.
On going on deck I found that she had fallen off into the trough of the sea, and was being sent from side to side in away which seemed sufficient to jerk the masts out of her. The rigging was well set up, or they would have gone to a certainty. We had not seen the worst of it. The gale blew harder and harder, and presently down came the rain in a way I had never seen it fall before, in regular torrents, as if some huge reservoirs had been emptied out on us in a moment, flooding the decks, and wetting us through our pea-coats to the skin.