e sloop's
bottom. I found by the amount of work done in three minutes' or less
time that I had by no means grown stiff-jointed on the voyage; anyhow,
scurvy had not set in, and being now within a few degrees of home, I
might complete the voyage, I thought, without the aid of a doctor.
Yes, my health was still good, and I could skip about the decks in a
lively manner, but could I climb? The great King Neptune tested me
severely at this time, for the stay being gone, the mast itself
switched about like a reed, and was not easy to climb; but a
gun-tackle purchase was got up, and the stay set taut from the
masthead, for I had spare blocks and rope on board with which to rig
it, and the jib, with a reef in it, was soon pulling again like a
"sodger" for home. Had the _Spray's_ mast not been well stepped,
however, it would have been "John Walker" when the stay broke. Good
work in the building of my vessel stood me always in good stead.

On the 23d of June I was at last tired, tired, tired of baffling
squalls and fretful cobble-seas. I had not seen a vessel for days and
days, where I had expected the company of at least a schooner now and
then. As to the whistling of the wind through the rigging, and the
slopping of the sea against the sloop's sides, that was well enough in
its way, and we could not have got on without it, the _Spray_ and I;
but there was so much of it now, and it lasted so long! At noon of
that day a winterish storm was upon us from the nor'west. In the Gulf
Stream, thus late in June, hailstones were pelting the _Spray_, and
lightning was pouring down from the clouds, not in flashes alone, but
in almost continuous streams. By slants, however, day and night I
worked the sloop in toward the coast, where, on the 25th of June, off
Fire Island, she fell into the tornado which, an hour earlier, had
swept over New York city with lightning that wrecked buildings and
sent trees flying about in splinters; even ships at docks had parted
their moorings and smashed into other ships, doing great damage. It
was the climax storm of the voyage, but I saw the unmistakable
character of it in time to have all snug aboard and receive it under
bare poles. Even so, the sloop shivered when it struck her, and she
heeled over unwillingly on her beam ends; but rounding to, with a
sea-anchor ahead, she righted and faced out the storm. In the midst of
the gale I could do no more than look on, for what is a man in a storm
like this? I had