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Updated: June 23, 2025
The sharpest and strongest of these deadly weapons is generally stopped or fastened to the fore-tack bumpkin, a spar some ten or twelve feet long, projecting from the bows of a ship on each side like the horns of a snail, to which the tack or lower corner of the foresail is drawn down when the ship is on a wind.
An intention to round-to, as soon as through the passage, down boat and land, which had been promptly conceived when he found that his first aim had failed, was as suddenly abandoned, and he gave the command to "board fore-tack;" immediately after, his call was to "pack on the brig," and not without a little tremour in his voice, as soon as he perceived that the figure had vanished.
We enter'd the greater Number of our Men, who were so warmly received, that but few came off; and as she was preparing to board us in her Turn, if we had not, by a lucky Shot, brought her Main-top-mast by the board, by which Accident we got off, she had certainly carried us. Upon this we got our Fore-Tack to the Cat-head, hoisted our Top-sails a-trip, and went away all Sails drawing.
"Raise tacks and sheets!" and the fore-tack and main sheets were cast- off, while the weather main brace was hauled taut. "Mainsail haul!" was the next order; when, on the heavy yard swinging round, the Esmeralda came up to the wind slowly, as if casting a long, lingering farewell look at the Welsh coast, in deep regret at leaving it.
We got the starboard fore-tack forward, and the larboard sheet aft, by two tremendously severe drags, the blocks and bolts seeming fairly to quiver, as they felt the strains. Everything succeeded, however, and the Crisis began to drag off from the coast of Terra del Fuego, of a certainty; but to go whither, no one could precisely tell.
I defy any man in the ship to say that I am a backbiter, even against my wife, with whom I have a sort of lawful right to deal candidly. I make no complaints, and am a happy man at sea, and I piously hope Mrs. Trysail knows how to submit to her duty at home. I suppose you see, Sir, that the chase has hauled his yards, and is getting his fore-tack aboard?"
At this time, the captain and mate consulted together, and the latter came to us, in a very calm, steady manner, and said "Come, boys; we may as well go ashore without masts as with them, and our only hope is in getting more canvass to stand. We must turn-to, and make sail on the ship." Everybody was in motion on this hint, and the first thing we did was to board fore-tack.
Talboys, "here I am." "Let go the fore-tack"; and, contemporaneously with the order, he brought the boat's head round.
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