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That beacon hid from them a part of the sea and the sky. In the front, they saw the bowsprit stretching over the waves, with its three jibs, which were hauled tightly, spread out like three great unequal wings. Underneath rounded the foremast, and above, the little top-sail and the little gallant-sail, whose bolt-rope quivered with the pranks of the breeze.
The cutter heeled violently down, burying her lee gunwale half-deck high in the seething water, and I thought for a moment that she was going over altogether with us; the foresail jibed with a loud flap, and blew clear and clean out of the bolt-rope, and at the same instant the Water Lily plunged wildly into the boiling surf.
The wind had nearly spent its fury, and was subsiding fast; but the prospect was cheerless a dark wintry sky and rolling sea, and nothing living in view except the sea-bird that screamed as it skimmed over the white tops of the waves. The mizen of the vessel was still hoisted up, but the sheet had disengaged itself from the belaying-pin, and the sail had been rent from the bolt-rope by the storm.
There is no equalling, after all, a good, wholesome, honest English top-sail; which is neither too narrow in the head, nor too deep in the hoist; with a bolt-rope of exactly the true size, robands and earings and bowlines that look as if they grew there, and sheets that neither nature nor art could alter to advantage.
He paced the room furiously until I got through, and just as I laid down the paper he exclaimed: 'It is all very well, but you have let your jib stand too long, my fine fellow! I blew it out of the bolt-rope in pure spite!"
It all goes into old Grimshaw's pocket, and he'd skin a bolt-rope for the grease, and sell the steward if he could get a chance. He has sold a much nearer relation. I'm down upon the law, you'll see, Cap, for I know it plays the dickens with our business, and is a curse to the commerce of the port.
Well now, I had passed the last becket, and I sang out to the men to sway away, and I was standing on the jaws of the spanker-gaff, with my left hand on the bolt-rope of the trysail, so that I could feel when it was board-taut, and I wasn't thinking of anything except being glad the job was over, and that we were going to heave her to.
"One of the first things that I ask concerning my passengers is, is he married? when the answer is 'no, I set him down as a good companion in a gale like this, or as one who can smoke, or crack a joke when a topsail is flying out of a bolt-rope, a companion for a category.
One reef after another we took in the topsails, and before we could get them hoisted up we heard a sound like a short, quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of the bolt-rope.
Our chainplates, strong fastenings, and clenched bolts, drew like pliant wires, shrouds and stays were torn away, and our masts and spars were blown clean out of the ship into the sea. Had we shown a shred of the strongest sail in the vessel, it would have been blown out of the bolt-rope in an instant.
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