noon
Deprived of her fore-topsail , the little barque was soon left astern by her two unwelcome neighbours , and -- the fleet rapidly dispersing , now that it was no longer possible to regulate the speed of the several craft which composed it -- by nightfall her crew found themselves , comparatively speaking , alone , there being only some twenty sail in sight from the deck . That night was a most anxious one for Captain Leicester , the gale being heavier and the sea considerably higher than he had ever before witnessed ; the _ Aurora _ , however , proved to be a capital little sea-boat , riding over the great liquid hills light and dry as a gull ; and when at length the morning broke , revealing only two sail in sight , George felt so easy in his mind that he did not hesitate to go below and seek in his comfortable berth an hour or two of that rest which he so greatly needed . The first stroke of the hurricane had been , as is generally the case , the worst ; for about half an hour it had blown with frightful and disastrous fury , as has already been described , after which it lulled somewhat , and then had again steadily increased . Accordingly , when Captain Leicester went on deck at noon , he found the gale still gathering strength , the sea higher than ever , and the sky looking more threatening than he remembered to have ever before seen it . The ship was scudding under bare poles , and behaving capitally , too ; but George saw that if the sea rose much higher there would be great danger of being `` pooped ; '' so he -- like the people on board the unfortunate _ Princess Royal _ -- roused out a new foresail and , with very great difficulty , got it bent and set , reefed . This sail dragged the little barque along at a tremendous pace ; and from that time there was no further danger of her being `` pooped '' or overrun by the sea . On the third day the gale broke ; and by sundown the weather had so far moderated as to permit of the _ Aurora _ being brought to the wind and hove-to , a manoeuvre which George was most anxious to accomplish , since the ship had , for over seventy-two hours , been running to the eastward , or directly away from her port , at the rate of some ten knots an hour , giving her over seven hundred miles of extra distance to make up .