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Updated: May 11, 2025
"Long enough to learn all that is taught there, your Honour," was the evasive reply. "He came to be an officer, I suppose?" "If he didn't, the King had the worst of the bargain. But what is this I see hereaway, atween the backstay and the vang? It looks like a sail; or is it only a gull flapping his wings before he rises?" "Sail, ho!" called the look-out from the mast head.
The craft was clean at the bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with a spring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run of her. "One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not offer to hail.
He emptied a sax-shooter down the deck last bout he had, and nigh perforated the carpenter. Another time he scoots after the cook chased him with a handspike in his hand right up the rigging to the cross-trees. If the cook hadn't slid down the backstay of the mast, he'd ha' been obeetuarised." Tom could not refrain from laughing at the last expression. "That's a new word," he said.
A short forestay fastened to the sides of the "A" about four feet above the hull prevents the mast from falling when the sail is hoisted. The main halyards take the place of a backstay. The balsas cannot beat to windward, but behave very well in shallow water with a favoring breeze. When the wind is contrary the boatmen must pole.
There was but one thing to do. Retaining my presence of mind, I made a desperate spring and caught hold of the topmast backstay, down which I was sliding to the rail, when I saw the first mate rushing forward to try and catch me as I fell, he having just recollected that he had sent me aloft.
'But I kept pacing through my ship, till the surge loosened the sides from the keel, and the wave swept her along stript of her tackling, and brake her mast clean off at the keel. Now the backstay fashioned of an oxhide had been flung thereon; therewith I lashed together both keel and mast, and sitting thereon I was borne by the ruinous winds.
I had to cling tight to the backstay, and the world turned giddily before my eyes; for though I was a good enough sailor when there was way on, this standing still and being rolled about like a bottle was a thing I never learned to stand without a qualm or so, above all in the morning, on an empty stomach.
"What is this rope called?" he asked of the old man while Ellis was below, before he got under way. "The main sheet, sir," was the answer. Ernest made no other remark, but he examined where one end was secured; he ran his eye along it from block to block, and calculated how much of it was coiled away. "These are the shrouds, I know; and this?" he asked. "The backstay, sir," replied the old man.
But nothing occurred, everything remained silent almost ominously so on board the schooner, one head only showing above the torn and splintered bulwarks that of a man who, apparently wounded, clung to the main-topmast backstay, seeming to watch our approach.
And worse than all that, he puts it over on you; he's nasty, he's mean, he's a viper, a wasp. He ain't afraid of anything because he knows you dassent hit him for fear of croaking him. Oh, he's a pearl of purest ray serene, if anybody should slide down a backstay and ask you. If you fail to identify him any other way, his name is Mulligan Jacobs." After breakfast, again on deck, in Mr.
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