After Some Time, - Which Seemed Forever, - We Got The Weather Side
Stowed After A Fashion, And Went Over To Leeward For Another Trial.
This was still worse, for the body of the sail had been blown over
to leeward, and as the yard was a-cock-bill by the lying over of
the vessel, we had to light it all up to windward. When the yard-
arms were furled, the bunt was all adrift again, which made more
work for us. We got all secure at last, but we had been nearly
an hour and a half upon the yard, and it seemed an age. It just
struck five bells when we went up, and eight were struck soon after
we came down. This may seem slow work, but considering the state
of everything, and that we had only five men to a sail with just
half as many square yards of canvas in it as the mainsail of the
Independence, sixty-gun ship, which musters seven hundred men at
her quarters, it is not wonderful that we were no quicker about it.
We were glad enough to get on deck, and still more, to go below.
The oldest sailor in the watch said, as he went down, - "I shall
never forget that main yard; - it beats all my going a fishing.
Fun is fun, but furling one yard-arm of a course, at a time,
off Cape Horn, is no better than man-killing."
During the greater part of the next two days, the wind was pretty
steady from the southward.
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