Read "John Holdsworth, Chief Mate" by W. Clark Russell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
At six o'clock next morning the sleeping passengers were awakened by cries and trampings which, to some of them at least, were novel disturbers of their slumbers. They might have told the reason of all this noise without going on deck; for those who slept in cots found the deck making an angle with their beds, and the lee port-holes veiled with rushing green water, and all the movables crowded together at any distance from where they had been deposited the night before. And hoarse cries sounded, and the flanking of massive chains, and the strange groaning a ship makes when she heels over to a weight of canvas.
Yes! the "Meteor" was under weigh, with a spanking breeze on the starboard quarter, which she would haul round abeam -- her best point of sailing -- when she had cleared the South Foreland. If this breeze held, the pilot said, he would be out of the ship and toasting her in rum and water at Plymouth before the sun went down next day.