Read "The Wreck of the Grosvenor, Volume Iii" by W. Clark Russell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In bringing the ship close to the wind in this terrible gale, without springing a spar, we had done what I never should have believed practicable to four men, taking into consideration the size of the ship and the prodigious force of the wind; and when I looked aloft and considered that only a few hours before, so to speak, the ship was carrying all the sail that could be put upon her, and that three men had stripped her of it and put her under a close-reefed main-topsail fit to encounter a raging hurricane, I could not help thinking that we had a right to feel proud of our endurance and spirit.
There was no difficulty now in holding the wheel, and, had no worse sea than was now running been promised us, the helm might have been lashed and the vessel lain as comfortably as a smack with her foresail over to windward.