all while you could watch it, and a long
swell began to come up from the south'ard. A couple of months
earlier we might have been in for a cyclone, but it's "October
all over" in those waters, as you know better than I. It was just
going to blow, and then it was going to rain, that was all; and
we had plenty of time to make everything snug before it breezed
up much. It blew harder after sunset, and by the time it was
quite dark it was a full gale. We had shortened sail for it, but
as we were by the stern we were carrying the spanker close reefed
instead of the storm trysail. She steered better so, as long as
we didn't have to heave to. I had the first watch with the Benton
boys, and we had not been on deck an hour when a child might have
seen that the weather meant business.

The old man came up on deck and looked round, and in less than a
minute he told us to give her the trysail. That meant heaving to,
and I was glad of it; for though the _Helen B._ was a good vessel
enough, she wasn't a new ship by a long way, and it did her no
good to drive her in that weather. I asked whether I should call
all hands, but just then the cook came aft, and the old man said
he thought we could manage the job without waking the sleepers,
and the trysail was handy on deck already, for we hadn't been
expecting anything better. We were all in oilskins, of course,
and the night was as black as a coal mine, with only a ray of
light from the slit in the binnacle shield, and you couldn't tell
one man from another except by his voice. The old man took the
wheel; we got the boom amidships, and he jammed her into the wind
until she had hardly any way. It was blowing now, and it was all
that I and two others could do to get in the slack of the
downhaul, while the others lowered away at the peak and throat,
and we had our hands full to get a couple of turns round the wet
sail. It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared with
reefing topsails in anything like weather, but the gear of a
schooner sometimes does unhandy things that you don't expect, and
those everlasting long halliards get foul of everything if they
get adrift. I remember thinking how unhandy that particular job
was. Somebody unhooked the throat-halliard block, and thought he
had hooked it into the head-cringle of the trysail, and sang out
to hoist away, but he had missed it in the dark, and the heavy
block went flying into the lee rigging, and nearly killed him
when it swung