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Her courses were brailed up, but her topsails were set, while the top-gallant-sails and royals were flying away in ribbons, except the main-royal, which, with the mast, had gone over the side. We accordingly all looked out for her. We soon, as we rose to the summit of a long rolling sea, caught sight of her, plunging over the foaming waters and often half buried in them.
Hence, the old seamen stationed in that part of a man-of-war are called sheet-anchor-man. "I never go aloft, and don't intend to fall overboard," replied Bungs. "Don't believe it!" cried the sheet-anchor-man; "you lopers that live about the decks here are nearer the bottom of the sea than the light hand that looses the main-royal. Mind your eye, Bungs mind your eye!"
Besides White-Jacket's office as looser of the main-royal, when all hands were called to make sail; and besides his special offices, in tacking ship, coming to anchor, etc.; he permanently belonged to the Starboard Watch, one of the two primary, grand divisions of the ship's company.
At that time we were under courses, topsails, top-gallant-sails, and a main-royal; our fore-royal mast was snugly stowed alongside the long-boat on deck, where, at that tempestuous season, the main one should also have been. The order at length was given, "Clew up the main-royal! Let a hand go aloft and furl it."
Soon the new chase became clearly discernible from the quarter-deck, when she proved to be a large ship running to the northward and eastward under a press of canvas. So determinedly was she "cracking on" as to have everything set, even to her main-royal, notwithstanding that the wind was still blowing very nearly half a gale.
It was his opinion that the man had been shipped drunk by some boarding house runner; anyhow, only the second day out Vollar had been lost overboard from the main-royal yard, and Kate's child born outside the law. It was hard, he told himself again, walking down Orange Street, past the Custom House to Derby.
Gibney prepared to shorten sail and like a clarion blast his voice rang through the ship. "Clew up them royals." He lashed the wheel and they brought the clewlines again to the winch head. The ship was falling off a little before the fore-royal was clewed up, so Mr. Gibney ran back to the wheel and put her on her course again while McGuffey brought the main-royal clewlines to the winch.
The atmosphere was still oppressively close, but it was no longer as deadly stagnant as it had been during the earlier hours of the day; for, at intervals, the vane at our main-royal masthead, which hitherto had drooped heavy as a sodden deck swab, save for the swaying motion imparted to it by the lift of the ship to the heave of the scarcely visible swell, lifted and fluttered feebly for a second or two, pointing now this way, and anon in some other direction, showing that, away up aloft there, and as yet too high to reach and stir the surface of the sea, the air currents were awakening under the brooding influence of the coming storm.
"Mr Courtenay, you have good eyes; just jump up on to the main-royal yard, will you, and take a look round. This fog packs close, but I do not believe it reaches as high as our mastheads, and I feel curious to know whether anything has drifted within sight of us during the night."
In my particular case, feeling compelled to mount aloft, and attain that "bad eminence," the main-royal mast head, while the slender spar was whipping backwards and forwards with every plunge of the ship into a heavy head sea, and the visible effect produced by every vibration causing me to fear an inverted position of my whole internal system, no one can imagine the extent of my sufferings.
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