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Updated: June 11, 2025
The guns were deserted, and all the crew stood by either the tacks or sheets or braces, or crowded the tops aloft, ready with all possible rapidity to make any alteration in the sails which a shift of wind or change of course might require. Still the enemy kept firing at the frigate, but their shot fell either altogether short or wide of their mark. The wind increased the frigate flew on.
A little puff of wind on the larboard quarter, and then "larboard fore braces!" and studding-booms were rigged out, studding-sails set alow and aloft, the yards trimmed, and jibs and spanker in; when it would come as calm as a duck-pond, and the man at the wheel stand with the palm of his hand up, feeling for the wind. "Keep her off a little!"
It is some confounded contrivance for leading us astray, that is what it is! But since we are so close to it, we may as well ascertain its character, if only to be awake to the trick if it ever happens to be played upon us a second time. Hands by the braces here, and stand by to back the topsail.
"They are my braces, I suppose, of course," said Scoutbush, who never understood a joke about himself, though he liked one about other people; while Elsley, who hated all jokes, made no answer at least none worth recording. In fact, as the reader may have discovered, Elsley, save tête-
There were shouts; voices called hoarsely. Lamps began to gleam in the windows. Half-clad people emerged from their houses, men slapping their braces on their shoulders as they ran out of doors. Questions were shouted into the dimness. Then the news went over the town. It was cried from yard to yard, from group to group, from gate to gate, and reached the furthermost confines.
He divined at once what the manoeuvre would be, and ordered the braces be led along, hands by the studding-sail halyards and tacks, and everything ready to haul by the wind. We felt certain now of the character of our friend, and the men were already calculating the amount of their prize money. We were now within range, and must clip her wings if possible.
The cross of his braces came comically near his neck so short was the space of shirt between the top line of his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs, being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth instead of garters.
An exclamation of surprise broke from all on the deck of the Swan, and the men ran to the braces and sheets, in order to trim the sails. "Steady, men!" Captain Reuben shouted. "Touch not sheet or tack. We must sail past as if bent on our own business. If we change our course, now, they will suspect that something is wrong.
During the last twenty-four hours of the passage, we beat off and on the land, making a tack about once in four hours, so that I had a sufficient opportunity to observe the working of the ship; and certainly, it took no more men to brace about this ship's lower yards, which were more than fifty feet square, than it did those of the Pilgrim, which were not much more than half the size; so much depends upon the manner in which the braces run, and the state of the blocks; and Captain Wilson, of the Ayacucho, who was afterwards a passenger with us, upon a trip to windward, said he had no doubt that our ship worked two men lighter than his brig.
Beyond it the sails of the Maria Stella Maris, shaken from the yards, were piling themselves into snowy mountains, their foot-ropes and braces trailing down and breaking into leaves and clusters of the vine. He heard the murmur of streams flowing, the hum of bees, the whetting of the scythes even the stir of insects' wings among the grasses.
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