United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There was little danger in mid-summer, however; and we went gliding up on the quarter of the Gull of Troy, without feeling concern of any sort. "What sloop is that?" demanded the skipper of the Gull, as our boom-end came within a fathom of his rail, our name being out of his view. "The Wallingford of Clawbonny, just out of port, bound up on a party of pleasure."
It is a man, beyond a doubt, and there he hangs at the boom-end, as if sentenced by a general court-martial." Sir Gervaise now suppressed every expression of surprise, and his reserve was imitated, quite as a matter of course, by the twenty officers, who, by this time, had assembled on the poop. The Druid, keeping away, approached rapidly, and had soon crossed the flag-ship's wake.
While we were aloft the sail had been got out, bent to the yard, reefed, and ready for hoisting. Waiting for a good opportunity, the halyards were manned and the yard hoisted fairly up to the block; but when the mate came to shake the catspaw out of the downhaul, and we began to boom-end the sail, it shook the ship to her centre.
To-day was our last day at Copenhagen, and the crew seemed determined to make it the gayest. At early dawn, floating from the mast head to the bowsprit end, then down again to the boom-end, even to the water; and from the cross-trees along both back-stays, every flag and pennant on board the yacht might have been seen.
They presented new and difficult problems in spars and rigging able to withstand the strain of immense areas of canvas which climbed two hundred feet to the skysail pole and which, with lower studdingsails set, spread one hundred and sixty feet from boom-end to boom-end.
The strength of all hands soon brought the tack to the boom-end, and the sheet was trimmed down, and the preventer and the weather brace hauled taught to take off the strain. Every rope-yarn seemed stretched to the utmost, and every thread of canvas; and with this sail added to her, the ship sprang through the water like a thing possessed.
I was on the point of calling out to Drewett to hold on, and I would cause the boom-end to reach over the Orpheus's main-deck, after which he might easily drop down among his friends, when Neb, finding some one to take the helm, suddenly stood at my side. "He drop dat box, sartain, Masser Mile," half-whispered the negro; "he leg begin to shake already, and he won'erful skear'd!"
At the same instant Neb, in obedience to a sign previously given by me, had put the helm down a little, and the boom-end was already twenty feet from the quarter-deck of the Orpheus. Of course, all the women screamed, or exclaimed, on some key or other. Poor Mrs. Drewett hid her face, and began to moan her son as lost.
Still it was nice work; and while yet some thirty or forty feet from the perpendicular, the man on the boom-end made a sign for attention, swung a coil of line he hold, and when he saw hands raised to catch it, he made a cast. A lieutenant caught the rope, and instantly hauled in the slack.
The motion away out there, at the far extremity of that long spar, was tremendous; so much so, indeed, that seasoned as I was to the wild and erratic movements of a ship in heavy weather, the sinkings and soarings and flourishings of that boom-end, as the vessel plunged and staggered down toward the wreck, made me feel distinctly giddy.
Word Of The Day