l_
on the day when the hurricane burst with such destructive effect upon
the outward-bound fleet.

Deprived of her fore-topsail, the little barque was soon left astern by
her two unwelcome neighbours, and--the fleet rapidly dispersing, now
that it was no longer possible to regulate the speed of the several
craft which composed it--by nightfall her crew found themselves,
comparatively speaking, alone, there being only some twenty sail in
sight from the deck.

That night was a most anxious one for Captain Leicester, the gale being
heavier and the sea considerably higher than he had ever before
witnessed; the _Aurora_, however, proved to be a capital little
sea-boat, riding over the great liquid hills light and dry as a gull;
and when at length the morning broke, revealing only two sail in sight,
George felt so easy in his mind that he did not hesitate to go below and
seek in his comfortable berth an hour or two of that rest which he so
greatly needed.

The first stroke of the hurricane had been, as is generally the case,
the worst; for about half an hour it had blown with frightful and
disastrous fury, as has already been described, after which it lulled
somewhat, and then had again steadily increased. Accordingly, when
Captain Leicester went on deck at noon, he found the gale still
gathering strength, the sea higher than ever, and the sky looking more
threatening than he remembered to have ever before seen it.

The ship was scudding under bare poles, and behaving capitally, too; but
George saw that if the sea rose much higher there would be great danger
of being "pooped;" so he--like the people on board the unfortunate
_Princess Royal_--roused out a new foresail and, with very great
difficulty, got it bent and set, reefed. This sail dragged the little
barque along at a tremendous pace; and from that time there was no
further danger of her being "pooped" or overrun by the sea.

On the third day the gale broke; and by sundown the weather had so far
moderated as to permit of the _Aurora_ being brought to the wind and
hove-to, a manoeuvre which George was most anxious to accomplish, since
the ship had, for over seventy-two hours, been running to the eastward,
or directly away from her port, at the rate of some ten knots an hour,
giving her over seven hundred miles of extra distance to make up. The
_Aurora_ remained hove-to during the whole of that night; but at eight
bells next morning she made sail under single-ree