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Updated: May 25, 2025
At this critical instant while the seamen aloft were still gazing in the direction in which the little cloud of canvas had disappeared, a lanyard of the lower rigging parted with a crack that even reached the ears of Wilder. "Lie down!" he shouted fearfully through his trumpet; "down by the backstays; down for your lives; every man of you, down!"
The sailors were clustered around the boats, some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins, exhausted by long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready to fight for life to the last. Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the backstays, the former a good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter whimpering.
The lower masts, and the heads of the topmasts and top-gallant masts, are next painted, the yards blacked, and the rigging and backstays fore and aft tarred down.
As the afternoon waned the breeze freshened; but Murgatroyd had by this time got preventer backstays rigged, fore and aft, with the avowed determination of carrying on and making the very utmost of so splendid a breeze.
With another fiendish laugh Job sprang into the rigging, and was soon out upon the topsail-yard busy with the reef points. "Why, he's shakin' out the reef," cried Jim in alarm. "I've half a mind to haul on the starboard brace, and try to shake the monster into the sea!" Job soon shook out the reef, and, descending swiftly by one of the backstays, seized the topsail-halyards.
Then nothin' partic'lar happened until we was well this side o' the Line, when one day, when all hands of us was shortenin' sail to a heavy squall as had bust upon us, Jim Tarbutt, a hordinary seaman, comin' down off the main tops'l yard by way o' the backstays, lets go his hold and drops slap on top o' Mr Townsend, what happened to be standin' underneath, and, instead of hurtin' of hisself, broke t'other man's neck and killed him dead on the spot!
R , looking a little squally, said something to him, but he only answered that he knew the vessel and what she would carry. He was evidently showing off his vessel, and letting them know how he could carry sail. He stood up to windward, holding on by the backstays, and looking up at the sticks, to see how much they would bear; when a puff came which settled the matter.
Supposing them to come in contact side by side, the first roll would probably tear away the fore and main channels of both ships; the next roll, by interlacing the lower yards, and entangling the spars of one ship with the shrouds and backstays of the other, would in all likelihood bring down all three masts of both ships, not piecemeal, as the poet hath it, but in one furious crash.
She flung the foam from her bows; the spray breaking aft as far as the gangway. She was going at a prodigious rate. Still, everything held. Preventer braces were reeved and hauled taught; tackles got upon the backstays; and each thing done to keep all snug and strong.
Only stout, heavily ironed backstays kept mainsail and boom from being blown straight ahead. The boom end swung outboard till it dragged in the seas as she rolled. Only by a miracle and the stoutest of standing gear had she escaped dismasting.
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