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Updated: June 7, 2025
In a few of the dead-eyes in the channels could be seen frayed rope-yarns, rotten with age, and, with the stump of the foremast, the wooden stocks of the anchors, and the teak-wood rail, of a bleached gray color. On the round stern, as they pulled under it, they spelled, in raised letters, flecked here and there with discolored gilt, the name "Neptune, of London."
Their dreams are of cringles and reef-tackles, of knots, splices, grummets, and dead-eyes. They can tell the length, to a fathom, of every rope in the boatswain's warrant, from the flying jib down-haul to the spanker-sheet; and the height of every spar, from the main-top-gallant truck to the heel of the lower mast.
"No, I think we have gone through the most dangerous part of it," agreed Mr. De Vere. "But we're still far from being out of danger. There is a very heavy sea on." They waited and hoped. The throb of the engine became a monotonous hum and whir, and the crash of the waves like the boom of some big drum. Rob, looking through one of the cabin dead-eyes, exclaimed: "See!" The others looked out.
"I think we see his quarter-pieces more plainly, than before the gun was used." "No doubt, Sir, no doubt. I got a glimpse of his lower dead-eyes, a minute ago; but I have been near enough to see the saucy look of the hussy under his bowsprit; yet there goes the brigantine, at large!" "I am certain that we are closing;" thoughtfully returned Ludlow. "Hand me a glass, quarter master."
Most of them went up the side like cats, leaping for the chains and dead-eyes, slashing at the nettings, swinging by a rope's end, or digging their toes in a crack of a gun-port. Forward they were pouring over the bowsprit, vaulting like acrobats from the anchor stocks, or swarming up the stays.
"Oh! ay; yes, yes the lady is quite right. We are full jiggered from our dead-eyes to our eye-bolts." "I thought as much, sir, from your ground hamper and top-tackles," added the relict smiling. "For my part there is nothing in nature that I so much admire as a full jiggered ship, with her canvas out of the bolt-ropes, and her clew-lines and clew-garnets braced sharp, and her yards all abroad."
Unfortunately this breeze met me in the bows; for I had stepped my mast in the foremast, lashed it against the bottom of the top, which it will be remembered was now perpendicular, and stayed it to the mast-heads and dead-eyes of the top-mast rigging, all of which remained as when erect, though now floating on the water.
The rigging has been repeatedly set up, and is now so well stretched that it is ready for the last pull before going out of harbour. This done, and the dead-eyes and ratlines squared, the shroud and backstay mats are put on, and the masts and studding-sail booms carefully scraped.
"But a bit since, sir; or, for that matter, I think I see it now. Look hereaway, sir, just where the dead-eyes of the fore-rigging would bear from us, if the craft stood upon her legs, as she ought to do. If that isn't a boat, it's a rock out of water." Mulford gazed through the gloom of midnight, and saw, or fancied he saw, an object that might really be the boat.
But, before I could annihilate its owner, the pale face of Mr. SPILKINGS, with his dead-eyes turned in, dashed breathlessly into the saloon. "By all that's holy," he shouted, "the Captain's gone mad, and the crew have thrown off all disguise. We are manned by ourang-outangs!" Never shall I forget the horrors of the scene that ensued.
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