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Well, we’d had gales and gales, but this here gale beat anythin’ that I’d ever seen, and at seven bells in the first night watch, with a tremendious surge, the weather leech rope of the foresail giv’ way, and in a jiffy away went the foreyard in the slings—the foresail and fore-topsail goin’ into ribbons.

Half a dozen of the ship’s boys were floundering about in the sails, and sometimes even venturing beyond the leech rope.

Our main-topsail was totally disabled by a shell from the batteries, which cut away the leech rope, and several cloths of the sail; another shell went through the fore-top-sail, and one through the jib; all our sails considerably cut; two top-mast backstays shot away, main sheets, fore tacks, lifts, braces, bowlines, and the running rigging, generally, very much cut, but no shot in our hull, excepting a few grape.

Although the Cleopatra’s jibboom had given way, her larboard main-topmast studding-sail boom-iron had hooked on to the leech rope of our main-topsail, and was producing so powerful a strain on the mast that it seemed as if it could not possibly stand a minute longer.

Seeing this, a brave fellow named Burgess, a maintop man, sprang aloft, and, in spite of the bullets aimed at him by some of the French marines stationed aft, cut the leech rope from the end of the main-yard.