Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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By four bells the summits of the climbing cumuli forming the immeasurable arch in the west were right overhead, while the sky within its radius was now overspread with a filmy veil that hid the stars from view. Suddenly a chill breath touched his ear, sensitive as a hound’s, and immediately his fretful lassitude was gone. He stood erect, alert, every nerve tense, ready for action. “Stand by, the watch!” he roared, and in response a few dark figures slouched into sight from the shadowy corners where they had been dozing away the leaden-footed hours. Then a cool stream of air came steadily flowing from the mysterious centre of the gloom abaft. “Square the main-yard!” shouted the mate again; and with eerie, wailing cries the great steel tubes were trimmed to the coming breeze. The order was hardly executed before, with a rush and a scream, out leapt the west wind from its lair, while with many a sharp report and grinding of gear being drawn into its grooves the huge fabric obeyed the compelling impulse and began her three thousand league stretch to the eastward. By midnight it blew a gale, to which the same vessel, had she been bound in the opposite direction, must needs have shown but a scanty spread of sail. Now, nothing was further from the intention of the gleeful mate than the starting of a single thread.