The whale to which Roswell was fast continued sculling away to windward for quite two hours, causing the men to entirely lose sight of the other boats, and bringing the topsails of the schooners themselves down to the water's edge.

"The courses were hauled up, main-topsail to the mast, band on the quarter-deck, colors half-mast, and all hands, officers and men, stood uncovered, looking silently and sadly upon the body as it lay upon the gang-boards in its white hammock, ready for the last rites.

It is of the essence of home life afloat to sit down to dinner heading up-stream, and to rise from table heading down-stream; to open a favourite book with a bit of shore-view in the casement beside you, and to close the chapter with the open river stretching from under your window, your half-drawn shade perhaps cutting the topsail from a distant schooner.

But as the wind now freshened, he gave orders to take in the topsails at night, having now sailed eleven days before the wind due westward with all their sails up.

Probably the horse marines reef topsails on horseback.

Against such odds resistance was useless, and the other ships were signaled to lower their topsails in answer to the gun which the leading ship of the squadron fired.

The Rancocus was under close-reefed topsails for the better part of a fortnight, in beating to the southward and westward, it blowing very fresh the whole time; and she might have been twice as long struggling with the south-westerly gales, but for the fortunate circumstance of the winds veering so far to the southward as to permit her to lay her course, when she made a great run to the westward.