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Updated: October 3, 2025
The wind flew round to the south-west with a loud roar, and it was fortunate that they were prepared the yards were braced round, and the master asked the captain what course they were to steer. "We must give it up," observed Captain Wilson, holding on by the belaying pin. "Shape our course for Cape Sicie, Mr Jones."
A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole: the carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and straightway files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board, and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of right-whale bone, and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes a pagoda-looking cage for it.
You watch the grizzly old man at the helm carrying his craft with strange skill through the turmoil of waters, and the boy, supple-limbed, yet weather-worn already, and with steady eyes that look through the blast, you see him understanding commandments from the jerk of his father’s white eyebrow, now belaying and now letting go, now scrunching himself down into mere ballast, or baling out death with a pipkin.
Lewis had not said a word, but I called out to him to shift for himself, and belaying the clew-line, in hauling myself forward of the foremast, I received a blow from the jib-sheet that came near breaking my left arm. I did not feel the effect of this blow at the time, though the arm has since been operated on, to extract a tumour produced by this very injury.
Still, in the hands of a powerful man, the belaying pin is by no means a despicable weapon. Thorpe hit with all his strength and quickness. He was conscious once of being on the point of defeat. Then he had cleared a little space for himself. Then the men were on him again more savagely than ever. One fellow even succeeded in hitting him a glancing blow on the shoulder. Then came a sudden crash.
The men were just belaying the halliards of the lug when boom a dull heavy report came from the battery; a great black cloud of smoke and dust, liberally intermixed with clods and stones and masses of earth, shot up into the air; and when it cleared away the battery was gone.
I was, therefore, not a little puzzled when I found the hold of the Dolphin was crammed with lumber; not a space having been left large enough to stow away the ghost of a belaying pin. Finding the captain in a pleasant mood one day, I ventured to ask him what would be the consequence if the brig should spring a leak in her bottom.
Running her, therefore, into a bight, ropes from the bow and stern were made fast to a couple of firs, and by belaying them taut, the cutter was kept clear from the base of a mountain that rose, straight as the mast, out of the water to an altitude of several thousand feet. This was the most beautiful and romantic spot of which the imagination of a poet might dream.
For a moment they were blinded and half-choked by the force and fury of the spray and wind, and crouched down behind their shelter to recover themselves. Then, with a hearty laugh at their drenched appearance, they made their way to the mainmast, and then, holding on by the belaying pins, they were able to look fairly out on the gale.
"Turner is moving, in there," he said, jerking his thumb toward the forward cabin. "What are you going to do? Let a drunken sot like that give us orders, and bang us with a belaying pin when we don't please him?" "He is the owner. But one thing we can do, Jones. We can keep him from more liquor. Williams!" He came out, more dead than alive.
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