Ordered the
donkey engine to be got ready for use last night, in case the ship
should make more water than the small bilge pumps could throw out.
Carried away the flying jibboom at 7.30 A.M.--saved the sail. As the
gale progressed the wind hauled to the south and west; and at 4 P.M.,
judging that the strength of the gale had passed us, I kept the ship on
her course, E. by S., which gave a quartering wind and sea; and although
the sea was heavy, and the wind yet blowing a gale, she made beautiful
weather of it, scudding as well as she had lain to. The wind blew fresh
all night, with a slowly rising barometer.
Escaped the "cyclone," a fresh danger threatened, and from the element
more feared by the sailor than either wind or water in their wildest
moods. It was about midnight of December the 14th that the watch on deck
were startled by the smell of fire, soon followed by the appearance of
smoke pouring out of the ventilator leading up from the berth deck. The
alarm was immediately given; hands turned up and sent to quarters, and a
strict investigation made. Fortunately no damage was done except to a
mattress and pea-jacket which were partly consumed; but the escape was a
narrow one, and the sentries on duty below no doubt considered
themselves well off, to escape with no other punishment for their
carelessness than a week's stoppage of their grog.
On went the Sumter with varying fortune, now running pleasant races with
some huge whale, that left a track upon the water almost as broad as her
own; now rolling and tumbling in a gale, with ports barricaded to keep
the water out, and donkey engine ringed to keep it under.
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