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I looked over our resources, and found that they consisted, in the main, of eight oars, two boat-hooks, two masts, two yards, three sails, half a coil of two-inch rope that some thoughtful individual had pitched into the boat when getting her ready for launching, half a coil of ratline and two large balls of spun- yarn, due to the forethought of the same or some other individual, a painter some ten fathoms long, and the boat's anchor, together with the gratings, stretchers, and other fittings belonging to the boat, and a few oddments that might or might not prove useful.
I was in hopes he was going away, but he only went to the forecastle-hatch, where to my horror he called down to the men carousing below to bring a lantern; and feeling that my only chance was to climb higher, I crept up step by step, ratline by ratline, till the light appeared and four men stumbled out on to the deck.
A few yards farther on, a prickly aloetic plant disfigured by a wide tear the other leg of my pyjamas, and almost immediately I tripped against a convolvulus strong as ratline, and was made to measure my length on a bed of thorns.
When at last it was safely shipped, and the tackles cast off, the size of this small portion of a full-grown cachalot's body could be realized, not before. It was hauled from the gangway by tackles, and securely lashed to the rail running round beneath the top of the bulwarks for that purpose the "lash-rail" where the top of it towered up as high as the third ratline of the main-rigging.
I took a length of ratline line and secured it to one of these spears, and carried it on deck with the powder-room bull's-eye lamp; but when I probed the sounding-pipe I found it full of ice, and as it was impossible to draw the pumps, I flung my ingenious sounding-rod down in a passion of grief and mortification. Yet was I not to be beaten.
Then, with my right, I could reach to the forrard shroud, over his right shoulder, and having got a grip, I shifted my left to a level with it; at the same moment, I was able to get my foot on to the splice of a ratline and so give myself a further lift. Then I paused an instant, and glanced up. "Stubbins! Stubbins!" I shouted. "Plummer! Plummer!"
If it was there, as soon as he caught sight of it, he would spring up into the rigging and sit on a ratline, as quiet and demure as a judge, without attempting to retaliate. On board the frigate there was little to interrupt the usual routine.
Not that I was any longer ambitious of being a sailor, and could I have transported myself safely home again at that moment, it is not likely I should ever afterwards have set foot upon a ratline.
At this moment Pierre, who turned out to be the boatswain of the ship, accompanied by the three other men, one of whom carried a length of ratline in his hand, came clattering down the companion ladder, and entered the cabin.
"That's just like your usual carelessness, Mr J . Now go up to the mast-head, and stay there till I call you down." Jerry, who did not like the turn which the joke had taken, moved up with a very reluctant step at the rate of about one ratline in ten seconds. "Come, sir, what are you about? start up."
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