These were bent 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 furled 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 northwester.
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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