These were done one at
a time, and with the greatest care and difficulty. Two spare courses
were then got up and bent in the same manner and furled, and a
storm-jib, with the bonnet off, bent and furied to the boom. It was
twelve o'clock before we got through; and five hours of more
exhausting labor I never experienced; and no one of that ship's
crew, I will venture to say, will ever desire again to unbend and bend
five large sails, in the teeth of a tremendous north-wester. Towards
night, a few clouds appeared in the horizon, and as the gale
moderated, the usual appearance of driving clouds relieved the face of
the sky. The fifth day after the commencement of the storm, we shook a
reef out of each topsail, and set the reefed foresail, jib and
spanker; but it was not until after eight days of reefed topsails that
we had a whole sail on the ship; and then it was quite soon enough,
for the captain was anxious to make up for leeway, the gale having
blown us half the distance to the Sandwich Islands.
Inch by inch, as fast as the gale would permit, we made sail on
the ship, for the wind still continued ahead, and we had many days'
sailing to get back to the longitude we were in when the storm took
us.
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