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"Hurrah!" exclaimed Ritson. "Now you have him, lads. Hold on every inch of line, or he'll break away from you yet. Bear a hand here, one of you. Take the spanker-sheet and throw a running-bowline round the line, so's we can get it down over his fins. That's your sort, Ned; don't let him get it into his jaws. Cleverly done; haul taut. Now we have him safe.
Their dreams are of cringles and reef-tackles, of knots, splices, grummets, and dead-eyes. They can tell the length, to a fathom, of every rope in the boatswain's warrant, from the flying jib down-haul to the spanker-sheet; and the height of every spar, from the main-top-gallant truck to the heel of the lower mast.
I was stationed at the weather cross-jack braces; three other light hands at the lee; one boy at the spanker-sheet and guy; a man and a boy at the main topsail, top-gallant, and royal braces; and all the rest of the crew men and boys tallied on to the main brace.
This was the final signal displayed between the two craft. Both signal-flags were lowered, and for a half-hour Seldom waited, until the others had lifted a nine-inch hawser from the forepeak and coiled it down. Then came his next orders in a continuous roar: "Three hands aft to the spanker-sheet! Stand by to slack off and haul in! Man the braces for wearing ship, the rest o' you!
I was stationed at the weather cross-jack braces; three other light hands at the lee; one boy at the spanker-sheet and guy; a man and a boy at the main topsail, top-gallant, and royal braces; and all the rest of the crew men and boys tallied on to the main brace.
At length, one night, as I lay looking up through our little skylight, at the flapping of the great white spanker-sheet, my special enemy and dread, because the captain would keep it up when I thought it unsafe, it seemed such a lawless thing, and so ready to overturn us every time it shifted, a great cheerful star looked in. It meant that all trouble was over. One after another followed it.
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