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"No," cried the captain, to whom a better programme had suggested itself. "Send him aloft! He seems fond of climbing up stairs. Drive him to the garret! He wants to be a sailor we'll make one of him!" "Ha! ha!" rejoined the mate with a hoarse laugh at the wit of his superior; "the very thing, by Jove! give him an airing on the royal-yard!"
It is a perilous feat, even for one who has had some practice in climbing, to reach the royal-yard of a big ship, but to me it appeared impossible that I could accomplish it. There was but the smooth rope with neither knot nor loop to aid hand or foot. I must go up it hand over hand, dragging the whole weight of my body.
But this was not to be, for I had but regained my original position on the royal-yard some ten minutes, when, as I kept the telescope steadily fixed upon them, I saw the brig bear up and run off square before the wind. The schooner promptly followed her example, and both of them immediately proceeded to rig out studding-sail booms on both sides.
"Get your glass, Ned, my boy, and slip up as far as the fore royal-yard, and see what you can make of her. I'll stay here, meanwhile, and see that Miss Stanhope doesn't run away with the ship." And as Ned hurried away to execute his errand, Captain Blyth turned to Sibylla and laughingly began to banter her upon her new accomplishment.
Shack," he said across the deck, "that an owner who would send that bark around the Horn, and the master who would take her, ought to be sequestered and cared for, either in an asylum or in jail." "Yes, sir, I think so too," answered the second lieutenant, looking aloft. "Might be an insurance job. Clear away that bunt-gasket on the royal-yard," he added in a roar.
"Captain Cullen," Dorety said, "you are in command of this ship, and it is not proper for me to comment now upon what you do. But I wish to say one thing. There is a hereafter, and yours will be a hot one." Captain Cullen did not even scowl. In his voice was regret as he said: "It was blowing a living gale. It was impossible to save the man." "He fell from the royal-yard," Dorety cried hotly.
When Keene reappeared on deck, after calling the skipper, I was comfortably astride the royal-yard, with my left arm round the spindle of the vane the yard hoisting close up under the truck. With my right hand I manipulated the slide of the telescope and adjusted the focus of the instrument to suit my sight.
It had been a long time since I last saw this island; but I remember my temporary admiration for the captain of the ship I was then in, the Tawfore, when he sang out one morning from the quarter-deck, well aft, "Go aloft there, one of ye, with a pair of eyes, and see Christmas Island." Sure enough, there the island was in sight from the royal-yard.
I thought I could actually see, at times, things moving and glinting faintly and rapidly to and fro in the gear. And once, I was practically certain that something was on the royal-yard, moving in to the mast; as though, you know, it might have come up the leech of the sail. And this way, I got a beastly feeling that there were things swarming down there.
At length, as the schooner rose upon the crest of a sea, the gleam of the sun upon white canvas was caught for a moment and instantly reported by a dozen eager voices from the forecastle. It then bore two and a half points good upon the weather bow. I again hailed the royal-yard: "Royal-yard there! can you make out how the strangers are steering, Mr Boyne? We are heading north-east and by north."
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