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No sooner, too, had the hands jumped into the rigging and the studdingsail halliards and tacks been cast off by the watch on deck and the downhauls and sheets manned, than the "first luff," pitching his voice to yet a higher key, sang out in rapid sequence, "Topmast stu'ns'l downhaul haul taut clew up all down!" "Bosun's mate," he then cried, "turn the hands up!"
He interpreted the manoeuvre as indicating a wish to get to windward, which the "Macedonian's" then course, far off the wind, would favor. He therefore hurriedly gave the order to haul up , cutting adrift the topmast studdingsail; a circumstance which to seamen will explain exactly the relative situations.
Now they stripped for the tussle to windward around Cape Horn, sending down studdingsail booms and skysail yards, making all secure with extra lashings, plunging into the incessant head seas of the desolate ocean, fighting it out tack for tack, reefing topsails and shaking them out again, the vigilant commanders going below only to change their clothes, the exhausted seamen stubbornly, heroically handling with frozen, bleeding fingers the icy sheets and canvas.
The stream anchors were cut away, and then one of the bowers also; all the boats, save one, the smallest, were scuttled and cast adrift; purchases were got on all the sheets and halliards, and the sails hauled flat as boards, and kept well wetted down; some of the water tanks were pumped out, to alter the trim and lighten her; the bulwarks and rails partly cut away, and, as a final resort, the maintopmast studdingsail was set, but the boom broke at the iron and the whole thing went adrift in a few moments.
For it was a beautiful afternoon and there was just a gentle wind blowing, so that the Industry had every bit of sail set that could be set: mainsail and foresail and spanker, main-topsail, and fore-topsail, main-topgallantsail and fore-topgallantsail and main-royal and fore-royal and main-skysail and fore-skysail and staysails and all her jibs and a studdingsail on every yard, out on its boom.
By these being acted on, the wind was first "spilled" out of the three topsails, which were then lowered on the caps; and, the studdingsail booms being triced up to their usual place when not set, in the topmost rigging, the men were able to go out on the yards and commence reefing in earnest.
"Ah, Mr Swop," continued Mr Bang, as the master was ushered into the room. "Plate and glasses for Mr Swop." The sailor bowed, perched himself on the very edge of his chair, scarcely within long arm's length of the table, and sitting bolt upright, as if he had swallowed a spare studdingsail boom, drank our healths, and smoothed down his hair on his brow.
It was during one of these wild sheers that the main topgallant studdingsail-boom snapped short off by the boom-iron; and there was immediately a tremendous hullabaloo aloft of madly slatting canvas and threshing boom, as the studdingsail flapped furiously in the freshening breeze, momentarily threatening to spring the topgallant yard, if, indeed, it did not whip the topgallant-mast out of the ship.
The studdingsail booms are sticks that stick out beyond the ends of the yards; and, as soon as the sailors had got out these booms, they set the studdingsails that belonged on them, so that it was just as if the foresail and the other sails that had studdingsails had been made so much bigger. And the Industry had set all the sail that she could set.
The result of this caution on their part soon became apparent, for we had scarcely fired a dozen shots when we saw the stranger's fore-topmast go swooping over the bows; and the next minute she broached-to, losing her main-topgallant-mast and snapping every one of her studdingsail booms in the process. "Cease firing!" shouted the skipper.
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