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Updated: June 4, 2025
They were trying to batter down the door leading into the steerage, but as yet with no success. "All ready!" shouted Perth. Phillips, who was the only one of the crew remaining on board, hastily belayed the clewline at the fife-rail, hauling it just taut enough to hold Bitts, without choking him to death.
I have heard the boatswain pipe to quarters but a voice in my heart didn't whisper Seu-zan! I've belayed the marlin-spikes on the upper jibpoop, but Seu-zan's eye wasn't on me, much. Young woman, I am not you're Saler boy. Far different." "Oh yes, you are!" she howled, seizin me round the neck. "Oh, how I've lookt forwards to this meetin!"
The unfortunate Chinaman was dragged from the ladder, and, as he swung clear, the two rascals let go the rope, allowing him to drop through the hatches into the lower hold. Then they belayed the rope, and went down below.
The effects of the lightning were various. The men who were close to the foot of the mainmast, holding on by the ropes belayed to the main-bitts, were burnt to a cinder, and their blackened corpses lay smoking in the remnants of their clothes, emitting an overpowering ammoniacal stench.
Then home came the topgallant sheets, and up went the yards, the royals following, and being set literally before the topgallant halliards were belayed. The fore-and- aft canvas was at the same time set, and the moment that the royals were at the mast-heads the yards were braced for casting the ship.
The captain shortly afterwards issued the order for all hands to be ready to shorten sail as soon as no chance remained of escaping without fighting. Even now there was a hope that we might get away, or that the stranger might after all prove a friend instead of a foe; every rope was therefore kept belayed.
We walked forward into the bows, and clearly made out the shape of a grapnel thick with shells, with its claws upon the bulwark rail of the half-ship alongside, and there was a line stretched between, belayed to what might have been a kevel on a stanchion of the craft we were in.
We got the new one out into the nettings; seized on the tack, sheets, and halyards, and the hanks; manned the halyards, cut adrift the frapping-lines, and hoisted away; but before it was half-way up the stay it was blown all to pieces. When we belayed the halyards, there was nothing left but the bolt-rope.
Reading these lines in our quiet homes, and in a comfortable arm-chair by the fireside, it is hard to realise the position of those eight boatmen. They were drenched and buried in each wallowing sea, which strove to tear them from the pin to which each man was belayed by the line round his waist; and their ears were stunned with the bellow of each bursting wave.
He slacked off the tackle falls of the davits under which the boat had brought up, dropped down the ladder and hooked them on. When he got back to the deck the four men hauled first on one tackle and then on the other, till the boat was up flush with the deck. The falls were belayed, and Oscarovitch got into the boat and opened the flap of the sleeping-sack.
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