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Updated: June 12, 2025
His mind went back to his midshipman days, to a stormy night and a heavy sea, an icy foot-rope, a fall, a plunge, and a cold, hopeless swim toward a shadowy ship hove to against the dark background, until this man's face, young, strong, and cheery then, appeared behind a white life-buoy; and he heard again the panting voice of his rescuer: "Here ye are, Mr. Blake; boat's comin'."
He forgot the foot-rope all day because he was thinking of me. I should have gone aloft and seized it myself." There was no reproof or sarcasm in the tired voice. She had simply made an assertion. "Why are you at sea, before the mast a man of your talents?" It was foolish, he knew; but the word "man" sent a thrill through him. "To please you if I may; to cultivate what you did not find in me."
Below him in the darkness a scream rang out, followed by the roar of the mate: "Are you all right up there? Want any help?" He had fallen four feet. When he could speak he answered: "I'm all right, sir." And catching the royal foot-rope dangling from the end of the yard above him, he brought it to its place, passed the seizing, and finished furling the royal.
Out on the yard-arm, Jaskett began to shout for help, and then, all at once, in the light from the Second Mate's lantern, I saw that the starboard foot-rope on the upper topsail yard was being violently shaken savagely shaken, is perhaps a better word. And then, almost in the same instant, the Second Mate shifted the lantern from his right to his left hand.
The elderly stout man of the watch felt that it was no ordinary occasion, and grunted out that he was b well going to lash himself to the haulyards, as he felt wearied. The lee yardarm man managed to crawl in on the foot-rope, got into the maintop, and fell asleep there, while the gradual cessation of speech from the champions to windward indicated that they also slept.
The Second Mate explained to him; but he did not speak loud enough for me to catch what he said. I had been struck by Jaskett's attitude, when the light of his flare had first revealed him. He had been crouched with his right knee cocked over the yard, and his left leg down between it and the foot-rope, while his elbows had been crooked over the yard for support, as he was lighting the flare.
A voice came to me from the rigging. It was the Second Mate's. He had been up to give us a hand. "Now then, Jessop," he was saying. "Come along! come along!" I turned quickly, and realised that the fellows were nearly all off the yard. "i, i, Sir," I muttered, and slid in along the foot-rope, and went down on deck. I felt fresh dazed and frightened.
And then he stopped as abruptly as he had begun. For, in a moment, the sail had thrashed right over the after side of the yard, apparently knocking Tom clean from off the foot-rope. "My God!" I shouted out loud. "He's gone!" For an instant there was a blur over my eyes, and Williams was singing out something that I could not catch. Then, just as quickly, it went, and I could see again, clearly.
In a fortnight I went aloft with the best of the watch to reef topsails, and trod a foot-rope without losing head or balance, bent an easing, and could lay hand on any lift, brace, sheet, or haulyards in the racks. John Paul himself taught me to tack and wear ship, and MacMuir to stow a headsail. The craft came to me, as it were, in a hand-gallop.
One of our boys, when off Cape Horn, reefing topsails of a dark night, and when there were no boats to be lowered away, and where, if a man fell overboard he must be left behind, lost his hold of the reef-point, slipped from the foot-rope, and would have been in the water in a moment, when the man who was next to him on the yard caught him by the collar of his jacket, and hauled him up upon the yard, with "Hold on, another time, you young monkey, and be d d to you!" and that was all that was heard about it.
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