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A breeze rattled the halliards against the mast, and ruffled the blue water of the bay in little patches. We hurried into our clothes, while the Chief warned us to keep out of the cockpit, and not get everything wet. Sprague struggled with his shirt, and declaimed his favorite poem in a muffled tone. "'And the flyin' fishes play, And speaking of flying-fishes, where is Simon?
No sailor, if he really be a seaman, and not a tinker or a tailor, ever goes aloft without taking a good look round him; so after I had cleared the halliards I clung to the slim spar for a minute or two whilst I swept the horizon carefully around.
Just as he spoke, there came another shot from the cutter; something aloft went "crack"; a rope unreeved from its pulley and rattled on to the deck; the mizen came down in a heap: the halliards had been cut clean through. The men leaped to repair the damage; it took but a minute or two, but we had lost way; the next shot took us square amidships and tore off a yard of our lee side.
Besides, she was flying a signal of distress, patent to every sailor that has ever crossed the seas. Her flag was hoisted half-mast high from the peak halliards. Half-mast high! I did not wait, nor did I want, to see anything further.
When this was done two of the men swarmed up the mast by means of the halliards. Then they hoisted up the shrouds, and fastened them round the mast, making all taut by means of the lanyards. The sails were still standing, flapping loosely in the light breeze, so the sheets were hauled in and the vessel again began to move through the water. Two days later they anchored in Valetta harbour.
Take this hatchet here, and go forward to the bows. When I say 'cut, you cut, without looking round. Cut the cable, see? Cut it in two, mucho pronto. And you, Hankin you, Gateo. Stand by the halliards, stretch them along ready to hoist. No. Hoist them. Don't wait. Hoist them now." One or two others lent their hands at the halliards, and the sails were hoisted.
For, one day, well off the Patagonian coast, while the sloop was reaching under short sail, a tremendous wave, the culmination, it seemed, of many waves, rolled down upon her in a storm, roaring as it came. I had only a moment to get all sail down and myself up on the peak halliards, out of danger, when I saw the mighty crest towering masthead-high above me.
This was not difficult, as its weight brought it down on to the deck as soon as he slackened the halliards; he unhooked it from the block, and then lashed the sail securely to it. When he had done this he looked round. A bank of dark clouds lay across the horizon to the northwest, and in a short time he could see that this was rising rapidly.
Tidy unrove the halliards, and made several attempts to heave the end on board the boat. At length she came in nearer, when he succeeded; and the rope being made fast, the boat floated back to a safe distance. Questions were now put and answered between them, but they could offer little consolation to each other. The surgeon had to acknowledge that they were without food and water.
It was a good smell just such a smell as our nostrils had hungered for for many months and it stirred a host of vagrant memories as it went sighing past the halliards and shrouds. Cinders had collected in the folds of the thick garment as wind-blown snow lies in the hollows of uneven ground. As I stood looking down at him an expression of annoyance passed across his sleeping countenance.
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