cook dishes better suited to the taste of the sick.
Most of the officers, who had from time to time been ill and wounded,
acknowledged and prized her talents and excellencies; and the Captain
declared that he considered he owed his life, under Providence, entirely
to the care with which she nursed him through an attack of fever when
the doctor despaired of his life.

"All hands on deck!" was the order given as soon as the Captain saw what
had occurred. The main-topsail had been blown from the boltropes, and
the tattered remnants were now lashing and slashing about in the gale,
twisting into inextricable knots, and winding and wriggling round the
main-topsail yard, rendering it a work of great danger to go out on it.
The boatswain's whistle sounded shrilly through the storm a well-known
note. "All hands shorten sail!" was echoed along the decks. "Rouse out
there--rouse out--idlers and all on deck!" Everybody knew that there
was work to be done; indeed, the clap made by the parting of the sail
had awakened even the soundest sleepers. Among the first aloft, who
endeavoured to clear the yard of the fragments of the sail, was William
Freeborn, the captain of the maintop. With knives and hands they worked
away in spite of the lashing they got, now being almost strangled, and
now dragged off the yard.

The Captain resolved to heave the ship to. The wind had shifted, and if
they ran on even under bare poles, they would be carried on too much out
of their course. It was a delicate and difficult operation. A new
main-topsail had first to be bent. It took the united strength of the
crew to hoist it to the yard. At length the sail was got up and closely
reefed, hauled out, strengthened in every possible way to resist the
fury of the gale. It was an operation which occupied some time. The
fore-topsail had to be taken in. The helm was put down, and, as she
came slowly up to the wind, the after-sail being taken off also, she lay
to, gallantly riding over the still rising seas. Though she did not
tumble about, perhaps, quite as much as she had been doing, her
movements were far from easy. She did not roll as before, as she was
kept pressed down on one side; still every now and then she gave a pitch
as she glided down into the trough of the sea, which made every timber
and mast creak and quiver, and few on board would have been inclined to
sing:

"Here's a sou'wester coming, Billy,
Don't you hear it roar now!
O