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In twenty minutes, spent anxiously watching her, the ship raised her topsails slowly above the line of blue, and then we saw she really was jammed on the wind and reaching along toward us rapidly. "'Tis the Pirit, an' no mistake!" cried the carpenter. "Look at them r'yals! No one but th' bit av a mate, Trunnell, iver mastheaded a yard like that." "The Pirate!" yelled Johnson, from forward.
"Well, it cannot be helped; and, anyhow, they are too late; for before they can even discover that we have the boats we shall be under way. Tail on again, my hearties, and let us get this yard mastheaded, then our heavy work will be done for the present.
With the assistance of this handy little piece of gear we got the heavy yard mastheaded without much difficulty, although the process was a somewhat lengthy one, in consequence of the necessity to frequently fleet the tackle, racking the halyards meanwhile to keep what we had gained.
That boy ought to be mastheaded, and I've told Perez so more'n once. Well, Mister, I guess maybe you'd better not try to walk to the cable station to-night. You see, there's one thing they forgot to tell you. The station's on the outer beach, and there's a ha'f mile of pretty wet water between here and there." The young man whistled. "You don't mean it!" he exclaimed.
But we could still see her masts and spars and sails above the misty stuff; and both the Captain and the Mate said they could see men aloft; and I thought I could; but the Second Mate wasn't sure. All the same though, the sails were all loosed in about a minute, it seemed, and the yards mastheaded.
The halliards were already bent to the yard laziness again, the fishermen evidently having been too indolent to cast them adrift, knowing that they would only have to bend them on again when next they wanted to use the sail and in another minute Tom had the sail mastheaded, the tack lashed down, and the sheet aft in George's hand; whilst the latter, sinking down in the sternsheets with a sigh of ineffable relief, and too tired yet to ship the rudder, steered the boat with the oar which he had used for sculling, whilst Tom was busied in the operation of making sail.
But, having once begun, there was nothing now for it but to go on with the work, and get the yard mastheaded and good way upon the felucca before those in the dinghy could pull back and get alongside.
The sailors had seen individual midshipmen spread-eagled and mastheaded, while all save those they could bribe were forbidden to bring them drink or food; but here was a whole body of junior officers, punished en masse, as it were, lashed to the rigging and taking the wind and the spray in their teeth.
I asked Jackwell, trying to be civil. "Keeps what up like what?" he said, in his old tone. "The yard," I answered shortly. "Oh, mostly by force of habit, I reckon," said he, nodding sarcastically at me and wrinkling his nose. "That's it, ain't it, Henry? Your yards stay mastheaded mostly by force o' habit, hey? They don't need no ropes."
The same afternoon we daylighted the anchor, mastheaded the sails, crested the briny wave like a Yankee sea-serpent, and on the second day let go no fool of a piece of crooked iron off dirty Deptford. As orders were received to pay us off, we were fully occupied for nearly a week dismantling the ship and returning stores, etc. On the second day I ran up to London and saw my mother.
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