the
top-gallant masts after them, and the flying jib-boom rigged in. Then
the top-sails close reefed and furled with extra gaskets, and so with
the courses; preventer braces clapped on, rolling tackles hooked, and
the spare purchases set up by the lower pennants. Meanwhile the
divisions on deck had got hawsers over the launch amidships, the chains
unbent, the anchors lashed down on the forecastle, and the quarter boats
triced well inboard and secured with the davits. At the same time the
light stuff from aloft was got below, the hammocks piped down, and the
carpenters slapped the gratings on the hatches, and stood ready with the
tarpaulins to batten them down. I never beheld a smarter piece of work
done afloat--not even, Hardy, in the 'Monongahela.'

"As I turned round an instant a hoarse, howling bellow struck my ear
from the island, and I just caught a glimpse of the tall cocoa-nut-tree
flying round and round in the air like an inverted umbrella with a
broken stick; while at the same time the men from aloft had reached the
deck, and, jumping to the battery, the guns were run in and housed,
spare breechings and extra lashings passed, and life-lines rove fore and
aft. After that, gentlemen, there was no farther need of a trumpet.

"You all know pretty well what sort of a thing a hurricane is, and the
one I speak of must, I think, have given you a touch of its quality here
in Jamaica."

"Ay, by the holy Moses! we remember it well, bad luck to it; and so does
Tom Stewart and Piron there, for it didn't lave a stick of sugar-cane
standing from Montego Bay to Cape Antonio."

"Yes," said Stewart; "and to show ye what a piff of wind can do, the
whirl of it caught up an eighteen-foot Honduras plank, and laid it
crosswise, like an axe, full seven inches into an old tamarind trunk
standing in my garden, and then twisted off the ends like a heather
broom! Hech, mon, ye may see it there now any day!"

Piron was thinking of the barks that were driving before that hurricane,
with no thought of the damage done to his own plantations.

"Well, then, I shall spare you all prolix description of it; and you
need only fancy a ship blown every where and every how except out of
water--now with the lower yard-arms cutting deep into the sea like
rakes, the lee hammock-nettings under water, the stern boat torn away
into splinters, the main-top-sail picked, bolt by bolt, from the yard
until there was not a thread left, and the lee anchor tw