My Danish Sweetheart, Volume Ii by W. Clark Russell

The first business of the men was to get the broken mast out of the water. Helga helped, and worked with as much dexterity as though she had been bred to the calling of the Deal waterman. The mast in breaking had been shortened by ten feet, and was therefore hardly as useful a spar to step as the bowsprit. It was laid along the thwarts in the side, and we went to work to strengthen the mast that had been sprung in the Channel by laying pieces of wood over the fractured part, and securely binding them by turn upon turn of rope. This, at sea, they call 'fishing a spar. ' Jacob shook his head as he looked at the mast when we had made an end of the repairs, but said nothing. When the mast was stepped, we hoisted the sail with a reef in it to ease the strain. Abraham went to the tiller, the boat's head was put to a south-west course, and once again the little fabric was pushing through it, rolling in a long-drawn way upon a sudden swell that had risen while we worked, with a frequent little vicious shake of white waters off her bow, as though the combing of the small seas irritated her.

The wind was about east, of a November coldness, and it blew somewhat lightly till a little before ten o'clock in the morning, when it came along freshening in a gust which heeled the boat sharply, and brought a wild, anxious look into Abraham's eyes as he gazed at the mast. The horizon slightly thickened to some film of mist which overlay the windward junction of heaven and water, and the sky then took a windy face, with dim breaks of blue betwixt long streaks of hard vapour, under which there nimbly sailed, here and there, a wreath of light-yellow scud. The sea rapidly became sloppy -- an uncomfortable tumble of billows occasioned by the lateral run of the swell -- and the boat's gait grew so staggering, such a sense of internal dislocation was induced by her brisk, jerky wobbling -- now to windward, now to leeward, now by the stern, now by the head, then all the motions happening together, as it were, followed by a sickly, leaning slide down some slope of rounded water -- that for the first time in my life I felt positively seasick, and was not a little thankful for the relief I obtained from a nip of poor Captain Nielsen's brandy out of one of the few jars which had been taken from the raft, and which still remained full.