Pike above my
head, and the trample and drag of feet as the men move from rope to
rope and pull and haul. More weather is making, and from the way
sail is being taken in it cannot be far off.
Yet at daylight this morning we were still wallowing in the same dead
calm and sickly swell. Miss West says the barometer is down, but
that the warning has been too long, for the Plate, to amount to
anything. Pamperos happen quickly here, and though the Elsinore,
under bare poles to her upper-topsails, is prepared for anything, it
may well be that they will be crowding on canvas in another hour.
Mr. Pike was so fooled that he actually had set the topgallant-sails,
and the gaskets were being taken off the royals, when the Samurai
came on deck, strolled back and forth a casual five minutes, then
spoke in an undertone to Mr. Pike. Mr. Pike did not like it. To me,
a tyro, it was evident that he disagreed with his master.
Nevertheless, his voice went out in a snarl aloft to the men on the
royal-yards to make all fast again. Then it was clewlines and
buntlines and lowering of yards as the topgallant-sails were stripped
off.
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