from
nowhere. No person could have told from the heavens, by their eyesight
alone, that it was not a still summer's night. One reef after another we
took in the topsails, and before we could get them hoisted up we heard a
sound like a short quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to
atoms out of the bolt-rope. We got the topsails set, and the fragments
of the jib stowed away, and the foretopmast staysail set in its place,
when the great mainsail gaped open, and the sail ripped from head to
foot. "Lay up on that main yard and furl the sail, before it blows to
tatters!" shouted the captain; and in a moment we were up, gathering the
remains of it upon the yard. We got it wrapped round the yard, and
passed gaskets over it as snugly as possible, and were just on deck
again, when with another loud rent, which was heard throughout the ship,
the foretopsail, which had been double-reefed, split in two
athwartships, just below the reef-band, from earing to earing. Here
again it was--down yard, haul out reef-tackles, and lay out upon the
yard for reefing. By hauling the reef-tackles chock-a-block we took the
strain from the other earings, and passing the close-reef earing, and
knotting the points carefully, we succeeded in setting the sail, close
reefed.

We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear "Go
below the watch!" when the main royal worked loose from the gaskets, and
blew directly out to leeward, flapping and shaking the mast like a wand.
Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come in or be cut adrift, or
the mast would be snapped short off. All the light hands in the
starboard watch were sent up one after another, but they could do
nothing with it. At length John, the tall Frenchman, the head of the
starboard watch (and a better sailor never stepped upon a deck), sprang
aloft, and by the help of his long arms and legs succeeded after a hard
struggle,--the sail blowing over the yard-arm to leeward, and the
skysail adrift directly over his head,--in smothering it and frapping it
with long pieces of sinnet. He came very near being blown or shaken from
the yard several times, but he was a true sailor, every finger a
fish-hook. Having made the sail snug, he prepared to send the yard down,
which was a long and difficult job; for frequently he was obliged to
stop and hold on with all his might for several minutes, the ship
pitching so as to make it impossible to do anything else at that heigh