Chapter 9

The moon was now
Rising full orbed, but broken by a cloud.
The wind was hushed, and the sea mirror-like

ITALY.

Most of the passengers appeared on deck soon after Saunders was again
heard rattling among his glasses. The day was sufficiently advanced to
allow a distinct view of all that was passing, and the wind had shifted.
The change had not occurred more than ten minutes, and as most of the
inmates of the cabin poured up the cabin-stairs nearly in a body, Mr.
Leach had just got through with the necessary operation of bracing the
yards about, for the breeze, which was coming stiff, now blew from the
north-east. No land was visible, and the mate was just giving his opinion
that they were up with Scilly, as Captain Truck appeared in the group.

One glance aloft, and another at the heavens, sufficed to let the
experienced master into all the secrets of his present situation. His next
step was to jump into the rigging, and to take a look at the sea, in the
direction of the Lizard. There, to his extreme disappointment, appeared a
ship with everything set that would draw, and with a studding-sail
flapping, before it could be drawn down, which he knew in an instant to be
the Foam. At this spectacle Mr. Truck compressed his lips, and made an
inward imprecation, that it would ill comport with our notions of
propriety to repeat.

"Turn the hands up and shake out the reefs, sir," he said coolly to his
mate, for it was a standing rule of the captain's to seem calmest when he
was in the greatest rage. "Turn them up, sir, and show every rag that will
draw, from the truck to the lower studding-sail boom, and be d----d
to them!"

On this hint Mr. Leach bestirred himself, and the men were quickly on the
yards, casting loose gaskets and reef-points. Sail opened after sail, and
as the steerage passengers, who could show a force of thirty or forty men,
aided with their strength, the Montauk was soon running dead before the
wind, under every thing that would draw, and with studding-sails on both
sides. The mates looked surprised, the seamen cast inquiring glances aft,
but Mr. Truck lighted a cigar.

"Gentlemen," said the captain, after a few philosophical whiffs, "to go to
America with yonder fellow on my weather beam is quite out of the
question: he would be up with me, and in possession, before ten o'clock,
and my only play is to bring the wind right over the taffrail, where,
luckily, we have got it. I think we can bother him at this sport, for your
sharp bottoms are not as good as your kettle-bottoms in ploughing a full
furrow. As for bearing her canvas, the Montauk will stand it as long as
any ship in King William's navy, before the gale. And on one thing you