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Updated: May 11, 2025
I hastened aft to where Smellie stood grasping the maintopmast backstay, and was greeted by him with the characteristic remark of: "What a fellow he must be, and what nerve he must have! Fancy a man running out of that river and through the fog under studding-sails." Then, turning to the helmsman, he said: "Now we have him fairly, I think. Up with your helm, my man, and steer for his jib-boom end.
Who knows? Perhaps we might knock away one of his spars and so help our own craft to get alongside. My eye! ain't they carrying on, too; topgallant-s'ls and stunsails on both sides. What a strain upon their spars and rigging! Cut away a brace or a backstay, now, aboard that Frenchman, and away would go a whole heap of his canvas. What a splendid craft she is!
The captain of the forecastle, a tall, fine-looking, hard-a-weather fellow, was standing on the shank of the sheet anchor, with his arms across, and his well-varnished canvas bat drawn so much over his eyes that it was difficult to tell whether he was awake, or merely dozing in the sun, as he leaned his back against the fore-topmast backstay.
Man after man was nipped, awake or asleep, on deck or below, or up aloft in the dark, when, reaching for another hold on a shroud or a backstay, he would touch something soft and furry, and feel the teeth and hear the squeak that spelled death for him.
I recovered myself, trembling and greatly agitated by the noise and the movement coming together, without the least hint having been given me, and grasping a backstay, waited, not knowing what was to happen next. Unless it be the heave of an earthquake, I can imagine no motion capable of giving one such a swooning, nauseating, terrifying sensation as the rending of ice under a fixed ship.
By this time, however, I had managed to come up to where Mr Jellaby and the doctor were holding on to the backstay, and as the wind just then dropped for an instant and the deafening din of the clashing waters ceased, I caught a word or two out of a long sentence which the unfortunate man screamed out at the moment at the top of his voice. "He's talking Spanish, sir!"
She luffed to deaden her way, that I might swim close, and as we approached each other I observed a crowd of heads forward looking at me, and several men aft, all staring intently. A man scrambled on to the rail, and with an arm clasping a backstay hailed me: "Schooner ahoy!" he bawled, with a strong nasal twang in his cry. "What ship's that?" "The Boca del Dragon," I shouted back.
He underwent a thorough examination. "And this, I see, must be the topmast backstay; and this the forestay; and that the topmast stay. Is it not so?" he asked. Thus he went on, rapidly learning not only the names, but the uses of all the ropes, and of everything on deck.
If in an ordinary ship you replace the shrouds and backstay by strong timbers, and take away the mast altogether, you have the arrangement adopted on board a prau. Above my cabin, and resting on cross-beams attached to the masts, was a wilderness of yards and spars, mostly formed of bamboo.
It was no pleasant job getting aboard, but ordering Haines to accompany me, and the others to lie by in the lee of the boom, I made use of a dangling backstay, and thus hauled myself up to a reasonably secure footing. The fellow joined me breathless, and together we perched on the rail to gain view of the deck.
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