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I went to New York to see the Sea Witch launched, and she's the tallest vessel afloat, with three standing skysail yards and, ringtail and water sails. She's black and has a gilded dragon for a figurehead; and, although she went out in a gale, got to Rio in twenty-five days. I talked to Captain Waterman, too; he commanded the Natchez, you know." How the child ran on!
The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light trade-wind was gently and steadily breathing from astern; the dark blue sky was studded with the tropical stars; there was no sound but the rippling of the water under the stem; and the sails were spread out, wide and high; the two lower studding-sails stretching, on each side, far beyond the deck; the topmast studding-sails, like wings to the topsails; the top-gallant studding-sails spreading fearlessly out above them; still higher, the two royal studding-sails, looking like two kites flying from the same string; and, highest of all, the little skysail, the apex of the pyramid, seeming actually to touch the stars, and to be out of reach of human hand.
When the last guard departed and the outer door clanged shut, all the forty beaten, disappointed men began to talk and ask questions. But, almost immediately, roaring like a bull in order to be heard, Skysail Jack, a giant sailor of a lifer, ordered silence while a census could be taken. The dungeons were full, and dungeon by dungeon, in order of dungeons, shouted out its quota to the roll-call.
The inside was then painted, from the skysail truck to the waterways the yards black; mast-heads and tops, white; monkey-rail, black, white, and yellow; bulwarks, green; plank-shear, white; waterways, lead color, etc., etc. The anchors and ring-bolts, and other iron work, were blackened with coal-tar; and the steward kept at work, polishing the brass of the wheel, bell, capstan, etc.
I assented to this on the credit of the informer, without knowing whether it was true or false, and he proceeded. "How are we to have white hammock-clothes, skysail masts, and all other finery, besides a coat of paint for the ship's sides every six weeks, if we don't expend all these things in action, and pretend they were lost overboard, or destroyed?
He belonged to the class of captains that was giving American packets the hard name they were getting, so I heartily wished him evil. As I turned, looking up at the beautiful fabric with her long, tapering, t'gallant masts, topped with skysail yards fore and aft, and her tremendous lower yards nearly ninety feet across, I thought what a splendid ship she was.
All hands were then sent aloft, and for an hour or two we were hard at work, making the booms well fast, unreeving the studding-sail and royal and skysail gear, getting rolling-ropes on the yard, setting up the weather breast-backstays, and making other preparations for a storm. It was a fine night for a gale; just cool and bracing enough for quick work, without being cold, and as bright as day.
Everything was confusion; the captain, springing into the first boat, bade his men follow, leaving, beside Harry, but two worthless fellows, who hardly knew a skysail from a jib-sheet, in charge of the ship. Harry kept his eye upon the boats for hours; he perceived they were evidently having a hard time of it.
Toward morning, the wind having become light, we crossed our royal and skysail yards, and at daylight we were seen under a cloud of sail, having royals and skysails fore and aft. The ``spouter, as the sailors call a whaleman, had sent up his main top-gallant mast and set the sail, and made signal for us to heave to.
Taking his hat, he rose from the table, and mounting the ladder, "On second thought," said he, addressing Skysail again, "I won't throw the cats overboard; the sailors have a foolish superstition about that animal its d d unlucky. No; put them alive in a bread-bag, and send them on shore in the bum-boat."
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