While we were aloft the sail had been got out, bent to the yard, reefed, and ready for hoisting.  Waiting for a good opportunity, the halyards were manned and the yard hoisted fairly up to the block; but when the mate came to shake the catspaw out of the downhaul, and we began to boom-end the sail, it shook the ship to her centre.  The boom buckled up and bent like a whip-stick, and we looked every moment to see something go; but, being of the short, tough upland spruce, it bent like whalebone, and nothing could break it.  The carpenter said it was the best stick he had ever seen.  The strength of all hands soon brought the tack to the boom-end, and the sheet was trimmed down, and the preventer and the weather brace hauled taut to take off the strain.  Every rope-yarn seemed stretched to the utmost, and every thread of canvas; and with this sail added to her, the ship sprang through the water like a thing possessed.  The sail being nearly all forward, it lifted her out of the water, and she seemed actually to jump from sea to sea.  From the time her keel was laid, she had never been so driven; and had it been life or death with every one of us, she could not have borne another stitch of canvas.

Finding that she would bear the sail, the hands were sent below, and our watch remained on deck.  Two men at the wheel had as much as they could do to keep her within three points of her course, for she steered as wild as a young colt.  The mate walked the deck, looking at the sails, and then over the side to see the foam fly by her,—­ slapping his hands upon his thighs and talking to the ship,—­ ``Hurrah, you jade, you’ve got the scent!—­ you know where you’re going!’’ And when she leaped over the seas, and almost out of the water, and trembled to her very keel, the spars and masts snapping and creaking,—­ ``There she goes!—­ There she goes,—­ handsomely?—­ As long as she cracks she holds!’’—­ while we stood with the rigging laid down fair for letting go, and ready to take in sail and clear away, if anything went.  At four bells we hove the log, and she was going eleven knots fairly; and had it not been for the sea from aft which sent the chip home, and threw her continually off her course, the log would have shown her to have been going somewhat faster.  I went to the wheel with a young fellow from the Kennebec, Jack Stewart, who was a good helmsman, and for two hours we had our hands full.  A few minutes showed us that our monkey-jackets must come off; and, cold as it was, we stood in our shirt-sleeves in a perspiration, and were glad enough to have it eight bells, and the wheel relieved.  We turned-in and slept as well as we could, though the sea made a constant roar under her bows, and washed over the forecastle like a small cataract.