y and deliberate fashion. Their next task was to haul down the
smaller staysails, then to clew up and furl royals and topgallantsails.
They were all aloft, in the act of stowing these sails, when the
hurricane burst upon them. They fortunately saw its approach in time to
save themselves, and, leaving the canvas drooping loose from the yards,
hurriedly descended to the deck by way of the backstays, and were
scarcely there when, with the first furious rush of the wind, the three
topmasts went, one after the other in quick succession, the wreckage
falling on deck and lumbering it fore and aft.

The crew regarded the mishap with stolid satisfaction. The delay which
it would occasion in the prosecution of the voyage was nothing to them;
the ship was stripped of everything above her lower mastheads, leaving
so much the less canvas for her crew to handle, and that was all they
cared about at the moment. A little later on in the day they saw that
if the gale lasted--of which there was every prospect--the loss of her
spars would result in her separation from the remainder of the fleet,
and as they remarked upon this to each other, the men smiled grimly, and
exchanged certain short pithy remarks which, had they been heard by the
occupants of the saloon, would have produced a feeling of grave
uneasiness.

The crew were, of course, at once set to work to clear away the wreck,
and this they forthwith proceeded to do, for their own sakes, however,
rather than out of respect to the captain's orders, the heavy spars
dashing about the deck with the roll of the ship in a manner which made
it positively dangerous to be there at all.

By nightfall the rest of the fleet had passed out of sight to the
eastward, scattered like chaff before the angry breath of the hurricane,
and the _Princess Royal_ was left to fight out her battle alone. By
dint of almost superhuman exertions, the shattered spars had been
secured, the main-sail cut away from the yard, and such other
dispositions made as would allow of her being kept dead before the wind,
and out of the trough of the sea during the coming night; and when the
captain took his seat at the head of the saloon-table at dinner that
evening, he was full of boastful exultation over the prompt obedience of
his crew, frequently congratulating his passengers upon their being on
board a ship in charge of such capable officers as himself and his
mates. Of course he did not actually say this in so m