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After some thought, he took some seventy pounds of salt pork from the barrel and put it in a sack, round which he fastened the rope in such a manner that as soon as the strain on it was relieved it could be shaken off. Then he climbed out on to the bough, and poured a little melted lard on the sheave of the block to prevent it from creaking.
When all was ready, the word "hard-a-lee" was passed forward to me from man to man; and the Ghost heeled about on the port tack with practically no noise at all. And what little there was, the slapping of a few reef-points and the creaking of a sheave in a block or two, was ghostly under the hollow echoing pall in which we were swathed.
This was followed by the gurgle of a rope through a well-greased sheave and the square lug, which had been the joy of little Sep Marvin at Farlingford, crept up to the truck of the stubby mast. "There is no wind for that," remarked Marie, pessimistically. "There will be to spare in a few minutes," answered Barebone, and the monosyllabic Jean gave an acquiescent grunt.
I had hit upon a plan by which, I thought, some of my difficulties of the morning might be got over; and, as soon as we were brought up, Bob and I got our floating- anchor on deck, stretched the canvas upon it, and rigging out our spinnaker-boom, a rope was passed through the sheave in the outer end of it, and bent to the crowfoot of the floating-anchor, which thus hung suspended, like a large tray, over the water.
P.W. Dalton, who superintends this department, is fastened to one of the hind legs, and this being attached to a rope connected with a huge wheel, the hog is raised from the floor and swung to a stand, where a ring of the clasp is caught on a large hook descending from the axle of a sheave or wheel, which runs along a railway, and the hog is pushed through a small passage-way into a second pen.
The clock marked the time as two minutes to five a.m., or within two minutes of two bells in the morning watch. Dropping the canvas screen back into place, I was about to announce the time to my superior officer, when I thought I caught, through the faint creak of the ship's timbers and the light rustling of the canvas aloft, a slight, far off sound, like the squeak of a sheave on a rusty pin.
Outwardly the old fellow had managed to keep intact; it was only when he cut himself a quid of tobacco by jamming the plug into the sheave of a block and sawing at it with one hand that it could be noticed his left hand never left his belt and that his sleeve was dark and soggy. Mrs.
It wad hae cleared aff a guid sheave o' yer mither's debts." Alec answered cheerily, although his face flushed, "All in good time, I hope, Mr Bruce. I'm obliged to you for your forbearance, though." He was too solemn-glad to be angry. "It canna laist for ever, ye ken," rejoined Bruce, happy to be able to bite, although his poison-bag was gone. Alec made no reply.
The silence of night lay heavy upon the breast of the placid deep, and seemed to be emphasised rather than broken by the faint sigh of the breeze through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main-royal, found it necessary to give the ship a spoke of the wheel one way or the other.
It was at once carried indoors, and, the lower end being fixed in a beam of the ceiling of the upper story, was run through the trap which led to the roof. Here, under the direction of Mr Ferris, who had some nautical knowledge, it was stayed up by ropes to the corners of the house, halliards having previously been rove through the sheave at its summit. The difficulty was to obtain a flag.
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