The Sea-Witch | Page 3

sir."

"I don't know, Mr. Faulkner, we can make her do almost anything."
"But talk," added the mate.
"Ay, she will do that in her own way, and eloquently, too," continued
his superior.
"In coming out of Matanzas, when you made her back and fill like a
saddle horse, I thought she was little less than a human being," said the
mate, honestly.
"She minds her helm like a beauty, and feels the slightest pull upon her
sheets."
"I never saw a vessel lie closer to the wind," said the mate; "she eats
right into it, and yet has not shaken a foot of canvass this half hour."
"That is well."
"It's uncommon, sir," continued the other.
"She must and can do better, though," said the young commander, with
an air of slight impatience. "Call the watch below, Mr. Faulkner, we
will treat our mistress to a new dress this bright day, and flatter her
pride a little; she is of the coquette school, and will bear a little
dalliance."
"Ay, ay, sir," responded the officer, without further parley, walking
forward to the fore hatch, and with a few quick blows with a handspike,
and a clear call, he summoned that portion of the crew whose hours of
release from duty permitted them below. The signal rang sharply
through the ship, and caused an instant response.
A score of dark forms issued forth from the forecastle, embracing
representatives from nearly half the nations of the globe; but they were
sturdy sailors, and used to obey the word of command, men to be relied
upon in an emergency, rough in exterior, but within either soft as
women or hard as steel, according to the occasion.
Now it was that an observer not conversant with the "Sea Witch," and
looking at her from a distance, would have naturally concluded that she
was most appropriately named, for how else could her singular
manouvres and the result that followed be explained? Suddenly the
mizzen royal disappeared, followed by the top-gallant sail, topsail, and
cross-jack courses, seeming to melt away under the eye like a misty
veil, while, almost in a moment of time, there appeared a spanker, gaff
topsail and gaff top-gallantsail in their place, while the vessel still held
on her course.

A moment later, and the royal top-gallantsail, topsail and mainsail
disappear from the main mast, upon which appears a regular fore and
aft suit of canvass, consisting of mainsail, gaff topsail, and gaff
top-gallantsail, reducing the vessel to a square rig forward, and a plain
fore and aft rig aft. A few minutes more, and the foremast passed
through the same metamorphose, leaving the "Sea Witch" a
three-masted schooner, with fore and aft sails on every mast and every
stay. All this had been accomplished with a celerity that showed the
crew to be no strangers to the manouvres through which they had just
passed, each man requiring to work with marked intelligence. Fifty
well drilled men, thorough sea dogs, can turn a five hundred ton ship
"inside out," if the controlling mind understands his position on the
quarter-deck.
"She wears that dress as though it suited her taste exactly, Mr.
Faulkner," said the captain, running his eye over the vessel, and
glancing over the side to mark her headway.
"Any rig becomes the 'Sea Witch,'" answered the officer, with evident
pride.
"That is true," returned the captain. "Luff, sir, luff a bit, so, well," he
continued to the man at the helm; "we will have all of her weatherly
points that site will give."
"The wind is rather more unsteady than it was an hour past," said Mr.
Faulkner.
"Rather puffy, and twice I thought it would haul right about, but here
we have it still from the north'rd and east'rd," replied the captain.
"Here it is again," added the mate, as the wind hauled once more.
The immediate object of the change in the vessel's rig, which we have
described, was at once apparent, enabling the vessel to lie nearer the
wind in her course, as well its giving her increased velocity by bringing
more canvass to draw than a square rig could do when close hauled.
But a shrewd observer would have been led to ask, what other reason,
save that of disguise, could have been the actuating motive in thus
giving to the "Sea Witch" a double character in her rig? For though
temporary and somewhat important advantage could at times be thus
gained, as we have seen, yet such an object alone would not have
warranted the increased outlay that was necessarily incurred, to say
nothing of the imperative necessity of a vessel's being very strongly

manned in order to enable her to thus change her entire aspect with any
ordinary degree of celerity, and as had just been