"
This much effected, the hands returned on deck, as much amazed at the
several arrangements as if the order had been to cut away the masts.
"If we had a few guns, and were a little stronger-handed," growled an old
salt to the second-mate, as he hitched up his trousers and rolled over his
quid, "I should think the hard one, aft, had been stripping for a fight;
but as it is we have nothing to carry on the war with, unless we throw
sea-biscuits into the enemy'!"
"Stand by to _veer_!" called out the captain from the quarter-deck; or, as
he pronounced it, "_ware_."
The men sprang to the braces, and the bows of the ship fell off gradually,
as the yards yielded slowly to the drag. In a minute the Montauk was
rolling dead before it, and her broadside came sweeping up to the wind
with the ship's head to the eastward. This new direction in the course had
the double effect of hauling off the land, and of diverging at more than
right angles from the line of sailing of the Foam, if that ship still
continued in pursuit. The seamen nodded their heads at each other in
approbation, for all now as well understood the meaning of the change as
if it had been explained to them verbally.
The revolution on deck produced as sudden a revolution below. The ship was
no longer running easily on an even keel, but was pitching violently into
a head-beating sea, and the wind, which a few minutes before, was scarcely
felt to blow, was now whistling its hundred strains among the cordage.
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