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The sunshine was swamped by a driving gray mist of rain; the glass started on a steady fall; and before dark, Kettle snugged her down to single topsails, himself laying out on the foot-ropes with the Portuguese, as no others of his crew could manage to scramble aloft with so heavy a sea running.
The officers went from picket to picket encouraging the men, but I had no duty; when fighting began my work as a civilian was at a standstill. I sat and shivered with cold under the monastery, and wished for the dawn. In a pause of the firing you could hear the followers hammering the pegs that held the foot-ropes of the horses.
There was no escape except out the head-gear, and I went that way, with him after me. Out the bowsprit, on to the jib foot-ropes, and out toward the end I went, hoping to reach the martingale-stay and slip down it to the back-ropes. I did so, but he scrambled down, tumbling and clutching, and gripped me just abaft the dolphin-striker.
No, sir the first man out on the bowsprit, if it's the jib to come in or out on the foot-ropes, if it's the mainsail to be tied up he's the man that will have a right to hold his head high next day aboard that vessel. And so the crew of a fisherman jump to their work if they didn't there'd be a lot more of them lost than there are." "Dear me," said Mr. Keith, "that never occurred to me before.
"We shall be afoul of the Phantom!" cried Dick Adams, as he began to run out on the foot-ropes by the bowsprit. "Lay in, Dick!" shouted Donald. "Don't go out there!" Dick retraced his steps, and came on deck.
Some who had been directed to loose the sails, fought their way on to the corvette's yards. Here they found the foot-ropes strapped up, but, notwithstanding every obstacle, the sails were let fall in less than three minutes after the boarders had gained the deck.
"There's no ship out there, Jessop," the Second Mate replied, looking at me with a queer, inscrutable expression. "There is, Sir," I began. "That will do, Jessop!" he said. "Go forrard and have a smoke. I shall want you then to give a hand with these foot-ropes. You'd better bring a serving-mallet aft with you, when you come." I hesitated a moment, partly in anger; but more, I think, in doubt.
Our gang laid out on the mizzen topsail yard, and after more than half an hour's hard work, furled the sail, though it bellied out over our heads, and again, by a slat of the wind, blew in under the yard with a fearful jerk, and almost threw us off from the foot-ropes.
An hour afterward the foot-ropes gave way, and I was deposited on the floor altogether, and was soon covered with small ants. Early in the morning the apes began to call to each other with a plaintive "Hoo-houey," and in the gray dawn I saw an iguana fully four feet long glide silently down the trunk of a tree, the branches of which were loaded with epiphytes.
Thence the necessity of running out on foot-ropes movable ropes stretched below the yards of working with one hand while holding on by the other perilous work for any one who is not used to it. The oscillation from the rolling and pitching of the ship, very much increased by the length of the lever, the flapping of the sails under a stiff breeze, have often sent a man overboard.
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