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As for stopping to examine, one who did not understand the language might as well hope to read the German character on a mile-stone, while flying past it in a rail-road car. At noon, precisely, away went our fore-top-sail out of the gaskets. One fastening snapped after another, until the whole sail was adrift.
"Loose!" said the executive officer; and the hands removed the gaskets, stoppers, and other ropes, used to confine the sails when furled. "Stand by let fall!" was the next order. At this command all the square sails should have dropped from the yards at the same instant, but as a matter of fact, not half of them did drop.
The line by which she was to be warped off was run out to the ledge of the rock; fresh water was taken on; provisions for the marooned beach-combers were cached upon the beach; the dory was taken aboard, gaskets were cast off, and hatches battened down.
My greatest concern had been lest some of the sails should get adrift, for they had been furled by few and fatigued men. This did not happen, however, our gaskets and lashings doing all of their duty.
We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear "Go below the watch!" when the main royal worked loose from the gaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping and shaking the mast like a wand. Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come in or be cut adrift, or the mast would be snapt short off.
When all was right, the bunts were triced well up, the yard-arm gaskets passed, so as not to leave a wrinkle forward of the yard short gaskets, with turns close together. From the moment of letting go the anchor, when the captain ceases his care of things, the chief mate is the great man.
Just as we had agreed to go below again, a blast, as if a fresh hand had beep added to the bellows, came down upon us; there was a terrific report, the ship heeled over on her side as if she were going down, and away flew the stay-sails out of the bolt-ropes, followed by nearly all the canvas, which, ill furled in our hurry, broke loose from the gaskets, and, fluttering away with loud flaps, was soon reduced to ribbons, knotted and twisted in every conceivable way.
As it was January when we arrived, and the middle of the south-easter season, we accordingly came to anchor at the distance of three miles from the shore, in eleven fathoms water, and bent a slip-rope and buoys to our cables, cast off the yard-arm gaskets from the sails, and stopped them all with rope-yarns.
Hear him: Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and cat-headed, and the ship under headway.
And due east, less than a thousand miles away, lay the coast of South America and the port of Valparaiso. Strange to say, none of our mutineers objected to this, and after dark, as we tore along before a full-sized gale, I sent my own men up on top the chart-house to take the gaskets off the spanker. This was the only sail we could set and trim and in every way control.
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