human
Curaçoa took us and the
gpt
Mosquito; the
human
Comus, the
gpt
Albatross and
human
Zephyr; and the
gpt
Swift, the
human
Lily. Thus we started, and under these conditions logged five knots, and all went merry until the sky began to frown, and displayed evident signs of bad temper. Half a gale blew, ships still towing, but cutting a violent caper because their freedom of action was curtailed. With the night the wind increased to a full gale, and as the ships were making the most frantic efforts to free themselves from the imprisoning hawsers, and likely to become bad friends over the job, signal was made to cast off. Now in her impatience the
gpt
Mosquito was not content to wait until we gave her her freedom, but proceeded to wrest herself free by pulling one arm of our main bitts clean off to the deck. Annoying, was it not? But this is a quality generally conceded to mosquitoes I believe. The squadron now re-formed under reefed canvas, and though we could see scarcely 400 yards ahead, from the obscurity of the weather, we managed to reel off eight and a half knots, the
human
Duke