During the next half-hour, however, the mizzen-topsail, which Tom Jerrold and I, with Gregory to help us, had fastened as we thought so firmly to the yard, was blown to ribbons, the spanker getting adrift shortly afterwards and being torn away from its lacing to the luff rope, scrap by scrap.
The main trysail, also, although only very little of it was shown when set, now blew away too, making a great report no doubt; but the shrieking of the wind was such that we couldn't hear anything else but its howling through the rigging, the captain's voice close alongside of me, as I sheltered under the hood of the companion, sounding actually only like a faint whisper.
The typhoon now shifted from the north-west to the westwards, and the barometer, rising shortly afterwards to 29.20, jumped up thence another twenty points in the next hour.
"It's passing off now," said Captain Gillespie, when he could make himself heard between the squalls, which now came with a longer interval between them.

"Those typhoons always work against the sun, and we've now experienced the worst of it.

There goes our last sail, though, and we'll have to run for it now." As he said the words the storm staysail forward was carried away with a distinct bang, hearing which showed that the wind was not so powerful quite as just now--when one, really, couldn't have heard a thirty-five ton gun fired forwards.
On losing this her only scrap of canvas left, the ship half broached to.
Joe Fergusson, however, came to the rescue, no doubt from hearing something the boatswain had said, for the gale was blowing so furiously that the captain would not have thought of ordering a man aloft; for, whether through catching Tim Rooney's remark or from some sailor-like intuition, the ex-bricklayer in the very nick of time voluntarily clambered up the rigging forwards and loosened the weather clew of the foresail.
Mr Mackay who was aft, seeing his purpose, at once told the men at the wheel to put the helm up; when, the Silver Queen's head paying off, she lifted out of the trough of the heavy rolling sea and scudded away nor'- eastwards right before the wind, which had now got back to the normal point of the "trade" we had been sailing with previous to the storm-- when, as this new south-westerly gale was blowing with more than twenty times the force of our original monsoon from the same quarter, the ship, although with only this tiny scrap of her foresail set, was soon driving through the water at over twelve knots the hour, in the very direction, too, we wanted her to go, to fetch our port.
"This is what I call turning the tables," yelled the captain, putting both his hands to his mouth for a sort of speaking trumpet as he roared out the words to Mr Mackay at the wheel.

"By Jingo, it's turning the tail of a typhoon into a fair wind!".