At Noon, We Lay Becalmed Off The Lower Light-House;
And It Being About Slack Water, We Made Little Progress.
A firing
was heard in the direction of Hingham, and the pilot said there
was a review there.
The Hingham boy got wind of this, and said if the ship had been
twelve hours sooner, he should have been down among the soldiers,
and in the booths, and having a grand time. As it was, we had
little prospect of getting in before night. About two o'clock a
breeze sprang up ahead, from the westward, and we began beating
up against it. A full-rigged brig was beating in at the same
time, and we passed one another, in our tacks, sometimes one
and sometimes the other, working to windward, as the wind and
tide favored or opposed. It was my trick at the wheel from two
till four; and I stood my last helm, making between nine hundred
and a thousand hours which I had spent at the helms of our two
vessels. The tide beginning to set against us, we made slow work;
and the afternoon was nearly spent, before we got abreast of the
inner light. In the meantime, several vessels were coming down,
outward bound; among which, a fine, large ship, with yards squared,
fair wind and fair tide, passed us like a race-horse, the men
running out upon her yards to rig out the studding-sail booms.
Toward sundown the wind came off in flaws, sometimes blowing
very stiff, so that the pilot took in the royals, and then it
died away; when, in order to get us in before the tide became
too strong, the royals were set again.
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