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Thus, his first act, after the mustering of the crew, was to furl the square canvas, to facilitate the working of the schooner; after which he requested Courtenay to go aloft to the topgallant-yard to search out from that elevation the deepest water and to con the ship accordingly.
"This will do it," cried Jim, who had been searching about, and now came with the broken end of a topgallant-yard to serve as a handspike. By its means he prised up the spar, while I as gently as I could dragged out the man by the shoulders. No sooner did I feel his jacket than I was almost sure that he was no other than our good old skipper.
When he arrived at the topgallant-yard he passed his arm round the skypole, and, adjusting the glass, swept the line of the horizon. There was a long pause. "Deck ahoy!" "What is it?" bellowed the captain. "Sure, there is a mist, or smoke right ahead, and above it I see what looks like the top of a mountain," replied the Irishman. "Nothing else?" "There is a low, flat berg." "Nothing more?
Notwithstanding this statement the ship was kept hove-to for another half-hour, with a man on the look-out on each topgallant-yard; when, nothing having been seen of the missing man during that time, Captain Blyth reluctantly gave up the search, and, wearing round, the ship once more proceeded on her voyage.
He felt that the last atom of air was jarred from his lungs by what he knew was the topgallant-yard, four feet below the royal; and, unable to hold on, with a freezing cold in his veins and at the hair-roots, he experienced in its fullness the terrible sensation of falling, whirling downward, clutching wildly at vacancy with stiffened fingers.
But, owing to our very limited amount of standing room, and the aggravating way in which the water still washed over our structure, this particular task of getting the topgallant-yard on end proved most difficult; and we were still struggling ineffectually for success when a loud groan of disappointment, instantly followed by a frantic hail, told me that something was wrong; and, looking again toward the ship, now distant only some two miles, we saw that she had altered her course a couple of points, by which proceeding she would pass to the southward of us without approaching any nearer.
Spike could hardly stand this, and he had to hail the topgallant-yard again, in order to keep the command of his muscles, for he saw by the pretty frown that was gathering on the brow of Rose, that she was regarding the matter a little seriously. Luckily, the answer of the man on the yard diverted the mind of the widow from the subject, and prevented the necessity of any reply.
This, with the fact that he was still but a few feet below the topgallant-yard, surprised him, until it came to him that falling bodies travel over sixteen feet in the first second of descent, which is at a rate too fast for distinct vision, and that the apparent slowness of his falling was but relative because of the quickness of his mind, which could not wait on a sluggish optic nerve and more sluggish retina.
A portion of the turtle, much the greater part of it, indeed, lay in its shell; and piles of wood and sea-weed, both dry, had been placed at hand, ready for use. A ship's topgallant-yard, with most of its rope attached, lay with a charred end near the fire, of where the fire had been, the wood having burned until the flames went out for want of contact with other fuel.
Let me, however, linger lovingly for ten lines on the knotting "knotting and splicing," as the never-divorced terms ran in the days when rigging a topgallant-yard was a constituent part of our curriculum. The man who has never viewed the realm of a seaman's knots from the outside, and tried to get in, must not flatter himself that he fully appreciates the phrase "knotty problem."
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