A Sailor Can Always Tell, By The Sound, What Sail Is
Coming In, And, In A Short Time, We Heard The Top-Gallant Sails
Come In, One After Another, And Then The Flying Jib.
This seemed
to ease her a good deal, and we were fast going off to the land
of Nod,
When - bang, bang, bang - on the scuttle, and "All hands,
reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths; and, it not
being very cold weather, we had nothing extra to put on, and were
soon on deck. I shall never forget the fineness of the sight.
It was a clear, and rather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling
with an intense brightness, and as far as the eye could reach,
there was not a cloud to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a
defined line. A painter could not have painted so clear a sky.
There was not a speck upon it. Yet it was blowing great guns from
the north-west. When you can see a cloud to windward, you feel that
there is a place for the wind to come from; but here it seemed to
come from nowhere. No person could have told, from the heavens,
by their eyesight alone, that it was not a still summer's night.
One reef after another, we took in the topsails, and before
we could get them hoisted up, we heard a sound like a short,
quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of
the bolt-rope.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 323 of 618
Words from 88391 to 88648
of 170236
