and as far as the eye could reach there was not a cloud to be seen.  The horizon met the sea in a defined line.  A painter could not have painted so clear a sky.  There was not a speck upon it.  Yet it was blowing great guns from the northwest.  When you can see a cloud to windward, you feel that there is a place for the wind to come from; but here it seemed to come from nowhere.  No person could have told from the heavens, by their eyesight alone, that it was not a still summer’s night.  One reef after another we took in the topsails, and before we could get them hoisted up we heard a sound like a short, quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of the bolt-rope.  We got the topsails set, and the fragments of the jib stowed away, and the fore topmast staysail set in its place, when the great mainsail gaped open, and the sail ripped from head to foot. ``Lay up on that main yard and furl the sail, before it blows to tatters!’’ shouted the captain; and in a moment we were up, gathering the remains of it upon the yard.  We got it wrapped round the yard, and passed gaskets over it as snugly as possible, and were just on deck again, when, with another loud rent, which was heard throughout the ship, the fore topsail, which had been double-reefed, split in two athwartships, just below the reef-band, from earing to earing.  Here again it was—­ down yard, haul out reef-tackles, and lay out upon the yard for reefing.  By hauling the reef-tackles chock-a-block we took the strain from the other earings, and passing the close-reef earing, and knotting the points carefully, we succeeded in setting the sail, close reefed.

We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear ``Go below the watch!’’ when the main royal worked loose from the gaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping, and shaking the mast like a wand.  Here was a job for somebody.  The royal must come in or be cut adrift, or the mast would be snapped short off.  All the light hands in the starboard watch were sent up one after another, but they could do nothing with it.  At length, John, the tall Frenchman, the head of the starboard watch (and a better sailor never stepped upon a deck), sprang aloft, and, by the help of his long arms and legs, succeeded, after a hard struggle,—­ the sail blowing over the yard-arm to leeward, and the skysail adrift directly over his head,—­ in smothering it and frapping it with long pieces of sinnet.  He came very near being blown or shaken from the yard several times, but he was a true sailor, every finger a fish-hook.  Having made the sail snug, he prepared to send the yard down, which was a long and difficult job; for, frequently, he was obliged to stop, and hold on with all his might for several minutes, the ship pitching so as to make it impossible to do anything else at that height.  The yard at length came down safe, and, after it, the fore and mizzen royal yards were sent down.  All hands were then sent aloft, and for an hour or