Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the
leeward land.
We at once began drifting to leeward, while they got out two pairs of oars and rowed their light craft directly into the wind.
So, when they reached the bow of the Lancashire Queen, nothing remained but to pass around and row down her port side toward the stern, which meant rowing to leeward and giving us the advantage.
It was our duty to sail the Ghost well to leeward of the last lee boat, so that all the boats should have fair wind to run for us in case of squalls or threatening weather.
There was just the faintest wind from the westward; but it breathed its last by the time we managed to get to leeward of the last lee boat.
And so on and so on, the ship meanwhile rushing on her way with a heavier list, a noisier splutter, a more threatening hiss of the white, almost blinding, sheet of foam to
leeward. For the best of it was that Captain S- seemed constitutionally incapable of giving his officers a definite order to shorten sail; and so that extraordinarily vague row would go on till at last it dawned upon them both, in some particularly alarming gust, that it was time to do something.
"That's what made us fetch to
leeward," the captain interrupted, desiring to vindicate his seamanship.
He knew, by the ancient telegraphy of smoke-signalling, the message was being conveyed from village to village and tribe to tribe that a labour-recruiter was on the
leeward coast.
You see, sir," he went on, "if once we dropped to
leeward of the landing-place, it's hard to say where we should get ashore, besides the chance of being boarded by the gigs; whereas, the way we go the current must slacken, and then we can dodge back along the shore."
One magnificent evening, the 30th July (that is to say, three weeks after our departure), the frigate was abreast of Cape Blanc, thirty miles to
leeward of the coast of Patagonia.
Now, the game having risen to
leeward, he and the other three German boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod's keels.
As we were almost constantly on a wind, and the breeze was not a little stiff, the ship heeled to
leeward very considerably; and whenever her starboard side was to
leeward, the sliding door between the cabins slid open, and so remained, nobody taking the trouble to get up and shut it.