Leach had just got through with the necessary operation of bracing the
yards about, for the breeze, which was coming stiff, now blew from the
north-east. No land was visible, and the mate was just giving his opinion
that they were up with Scilly, as Captain Truck appeared in the group.
One glance aloft, and another at the heavens, sufficed to let the
experienced master into all the secrets of his present situation. His next
step was to jump into the rigging, and to take a look at the sea, in the
direction of the Lizard. There, to his extreme disappointment, appeared a
ship with everything set that would draw, and with a studding-sail
flapping, before it could be drawn down, which he knew in an instant to be
the Foam. At this spectacle Mr. Truck compressed his lips, and made an
inward imprecation, that it would ill comport with our notions of
propriety to repeat.
"Turn the hands up and shake out the reefs, sir," he said coolly to his
mate, for it was a standing rule of the captain's to seem calmest when he
was in the greatest rage. "Turn them up, sir, and show every rag that will
draw, from the truck to the lower studding-sail boom, and be d----d
to them!"
On this hint Mr. Leach bestirred himself, and the men were quickly on the
yards, casting loose gaskets and reef-points.
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