Mr. Jones had the deck at the beginning of it, and skillfully got the canvas in down to the maintopgallant sail, when the captain appeared, and, with a falling barometer in mind, decided to call all hands and shorten down to lower topsails. This brought the other mate on deck, and trouble began. The maintopgallantsail and upper mizzentopsail, however, came in easily, and were stowed before the evil genius of the mates could get to work. But then--the port watch to the fore, the starboard to the main--all hands manned the topsail downhauls and weather-braces, while the two mates slacked away the halyards and roared officerlike behests. It was a scene of wild confusion. The yards had been braced for a beam wind; but this wind was hauling aft and increasing rapidly to a screaming gale, which, bearing hard upon the fixed ground-swell, raised an ugly cross-sea that occasionally lifted a ton or two of green water over the rail. Captain Brown, to get his topsails in the easier, followed the wind as it changed, keeping it abeam; and, with a poor helmsman at the wheel, stood close beside him and added his voice to the uproar of whistling wind, pounding seas, the formless shouts of the four gangs at the downhauls, and the senseless upbraiding of the mates. "Don't part those rotten downhauls!" roared the captain. "Watch out up aloft!" But the mates could not hear distinctly. "Haul away on your downhauls!" shouted Mr. Jones at the main-rigging, and "Haul away on your downhauls!" repeated Mr. Smith from forward, each speech embellished with stock profanity. The yards were down, and the tackles aloft "two blocks," but the fatuous mates did not see nor hear. "Belay your downhauls! Belay all!" yelled the furious skipper at the wheel. "Man the spilling-lines, and send a man aft who can steer!" "Haul on your downhauls!" thundered the mutual-minded mates, and the exasperated men hauled with all their strength. There were six to a gang, and they could have broken new manila under the circumstances. The weather downhauls went first, and the wind within the hollow tube of canvas lifted the yardarms. Then a sea hit the weather quarter, boarded the ship, and washed the incompetent helmsman to the lee alley, where he lay quiet for a time. The captain seized the wheel and ground it up, yelling the while to "send a man aft, to haul away on the spilling-lines, to shut up that d--d noise at the halyards, and 'tend to business."