" And then the fatal words:
"That'll do your mainsail; jump for'ard and haul round
your foreyards."
To stay a square-rigged ship is an affair of knowledge
and swift sight: and a man used to the succinct
evolutions of a schooner will always tend to be too
hasty with a brig. It was so now. The order came too
soon; the topsails set flat aback; the ship was in
irons. Even yet, had the helm been reversed, they
might have saved her. But to think of a sternboard at
all, far more to think of profiting by one, were
foreign to the schooner-sailor's mind. Wicks made
haste instead to wear ship, a manoeuvre for which room
was wanting, and the FLYING SCUD took ground on a
bank of sand and coral about twenty minutes before
five.
Wicks was no hand with a square-rigger, and he had
shown it. But he was a sailor and a born captain of
men for all homely purposes, where intellect is not
required and an eye in a man's head and a heart under
his jacket will suffice. Before the others had time to
understand the misfortune, he was bawling fresh orders,
and had the sails clewed up, and took soundings round
the ship.
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