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"Here I calls for to take a pull in the main-brace, and the whole crowd of duff-eaters come layin' aft as if the skipper of a ship should blow them all off to drinks. Blast me, Trunnell, I'd 'a' thought you'd get them into better discipline. It's come to a fine state o' things when the whole crew turns to every time I get thirsty.
"Why, trate them dock loompers to grog all round. They've worruked loike blue nayghurs; specially that l'adin' man av theirs, that chap there, see him, wid the big nose on his face? I'd loike to pipe all hands down in the cabin to splice the main-brace, if ownly the foorst mate were aboord," he repeated in a regretful tone.
When he came on the quarter-deck, he usually looked at the weather main-brace, and if it was not as taut as a bar, would order it to be made so. Here he could not easily commit himself: but it became a bye-word with us when we laughed at him below.
The captain praised us, and, as a matter of course in that day, he called all hands to "splice the main-brace." After this, the watch was told to go below, as regularly as if nothing had happened. As for the captain himself, he and Mr. Marble and Mr. Kite went prying about the ship to ascertain if anything material had been cut by what the chief-mate called "the bloody Indian matchlocks."
Mary's bank; a Captain Livingstone having reported, about forty years ago, that he saw white waters hereabouts, and no nation having thought it worth while to verify the report. Thermometer 63°. Heavy rain-squalls. The weather during the night was dirty and squally, with lightning all around the horizon by turns, and heavy rain.. Spliced the main-brace.
One day the boatswain's mates repeated the commands at the hatchways: "All hands tack ship, ahoy!" It was just eight bells, noon, and, springing from his jacket, which he had spread between the guns for a bed on the main deck, Fernando ran up the ladders, and, as usual, seized hold of the main-brace which fifty hands were streaming along forward.
However, `all's well that ends well, so we will first take the mainsail off her, Mr Howard, and then you may splice the main-brace and call the watch. Let her go along clean full, quartermaster; there is nothing to leeward now that we need be afraid of. How's her head?" "Nor'-nor'-west, sir," answered the quartermaster.
"Mother, here's your beef tea," said a brief voice. Alfred Price fled. He met his son just as he was entering his own house, and burst into a confidence: "Cy, my boy, come aft and splice the main-brace. Cyrus, what a female! She knocked me higher than Gilroy's kite. And her mother was as sweet a girl as you ever saw!" He drew his son into a little, low-browed, dingy room at the end of the hall.
"Pass the word to serve out a tot of grog to each man; let them splice the main-brace once more before they die," said Seymour, grimly, amid a chorus of approving murmurs from the sailors, as he walked slowly along the lines, greeting men here and there with plain, bluff words of cheer, which brought smiles of pleasure to their stern, weather-beaten faces.
Thus the position of the main-tack block, and those of the fore and main sheets, the main-brace blocks, topsail sheet and brace bitts, with the number of sheeves in each, and twenty other things relating to kevils, cleats, and belaying pins, will be dependent for much of their eventual efficiency on the length of the yards, the size of the sails, and other circumstances which it is quite in vain, and quite unreasonable to expect the dockyard workmen to take into account.
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