al and topgallant yards, and afterwards
took a hand in sending down the topgallant mast, having the satisfaction
of finding, when I returned to the deck, that we on the mizenmast had
beaten both Briscoe and Kennedy. I reckoned that, on board a
well-disciplined, old-fashioned British man-o'-war, the task of sending
down royal and topgallant yards and masts and stowing all canvas would
have been accomplished, under similar circumstances, in about twelve
minutes, at the utmost; but it took us thirty-five minutes by the ship's
clock. This I thought not at all bad, however; for in the first place
we were nothing like so heavily manned as a man-o'-war of our size would
have been, nor had our hands the constant practice in such evolutions
that a frigate's crew would have had. But the main thing was that our
lady skipper was satisfied, and was good enough to say so.

It remained intensely dark until close upon ten o'clock that night, when
the thinnest imaginable suggestion of moonlight came filtering weakly
through the dense curtain of cloud that now overspread the heavens, just
enough of it to enable us to see objects close at hand and avoid hurting
ourselves by running foul of them, as we had been doing while moving
about the decks. The weather still remained stark calm, and the ship
was rolling so furiously that I should not have been at all surprised to
see the masts go over the side at any moment. The gear was all good and
new, however, and held bravely; but the motion was so intensely
disagreeable, and we shipped so much water over both rails, flooding the
main-deck and necessitating the battening down of the hatches, that at
length Mrs Vansittart gave orders to start the engine, and the ship was
then put stem-on to the swell, which had now become more regular,
setting out from about North-North-East. This action brought us
immediate relief, as it enabled the helmsman to keep the ship out of the
trough, though the violent rolling was exchanged for almost as violent a
pitching. But the thunderstorm which Briscoe still persistently
maintained was coming, failed to eventuate; and hour after hour dragged
away with no indication of any immediate change, save that the feeble
glimmer of moonlight, instead of increasing, gradually died away again,
leaving us in almost as bad a plight as before.

At midnight, when I went on deck to keep the middle watch, Mrs
Vansittart was still up; and I thought that her temper seemed to b