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Every man was thrown off his feet, the masts went over with a crash, and most of the hands were swept overboard by the torrent that poured in over the stern. Stephen had grasped one of the back-stays, and though it seemed to him for a moment that his arms were being pulled from their sockets, he still maintained his grasp.
Our preventer back-stays which, for the benefit of the uninitiated, I may explain, were simply extra ropes intended to take a portion of the strain and so relieve the ordinary back-stays whenever it became necessary to carry a very heavy press of canvas were already cut and fitted; all that we had to do, therefore, was to send their upper ends aloft and attach them to their respective spars by shackling the eye to a stout iron collar on the spar, fitted especially for the purpose, set up the lower ends by means of runners to ring-bolts in the stanchions, and the thing was done.
This was the manifest work of God, who defended us in such sort from all danger, that not one man of us was slain in all this long and fierce assault, sustaining no other damage or hurt than this, that the shrouds and back-stays of the Salomon, which gave the first and last shot, and sore galled the enemy during the whole battle, were clean shot away.
They managed very well until they reached the little struggling crowd about the topmast rigging, when, to avoid them, the two men made a spring simultaneously for the back-stays.
The brig was handled smartly; she came to the wind, backed the maintopsail, and lay gently tossing to and fro on the long swells. The young captain stood on the rail, clinging to the back-stays, anxiously watching. The boat was dropped into the water, and with long strokes shot over to them. The men sprang aboard; rude hands gently and tenderly lifted the wounded captain in.
On one such night, the pirate's barque was tossed like a cork on the Pacific's heaving bosom, while the shrieking winds played, as it were, fiendishly with the fluttering shreds of sails which they had previously blown to ribbons. Richard Rosco stood beside the weather-bulwarks holding on to one of the mizzen back-stays. His mate Redford assisted the man at the wheel.
How it happened can never be known, but, somehow or other, both overleaped themselves missed the back-stays, and came crashing down on the poop where they lay motionless upon the white planks which in another moment were crimsoned with their blood.
In this way we were almost always able to raise the cry of ``Haul out to leeward'' before them; and, having knotted our points, would slide down the shrouds and back-stays, and sing out at the topsail halyards, to let it be known that we were ahead of them. Reefing is the most exciting part of a sailor's duty.
And, not content with this, they had further hampered the poor little craft with a regular maze of heavy shrouds, stays, and back-stays, all of which had been set up until they were as taut as harp-strings; so that we had only too much reason to fear that, in a fresh breeze and a choppy sea, we should find the little craft cramped and her sailing powers completely spoiled.
"West-and-by-north, and nothin' higher, sir," answered the man, easing his weather helm a couple of spokes as I turned away to see to the preventer back-stays being rigged.
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