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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Lord bless you, Mr Lascelles," was the reply, "the canvas ain't wove that'd stand a single minute before such a howlin' gale as this here; it'd be blown clean out of the gaskets if we was to cast a single one of 'em loose; indeed, I shouldn't be a bit surprised to find half the sails blown away from the spars as it is, when we get light enough to see how the little barkie has come out of the scrimmage.
She must do better than that, thought I; and when I had eaten some dinner I took a chopper, and, going on to the forecastle, lay out upon the bowsprit, and after beating the spritsail-yard block clear of the ice, cut away the gaskets that confined the sail to the yard, heartily beating the canvas, that was like iron, till a clew of it fell.
Since noon the barometer had been falling with startling rapidity, and all the signs were ripe for a great storm how great, not even the sailing-master anticipated. He and Chris set to work to prepare for it. They put storm gaskets on the furled topsails, lowered and stowed the foresail and spanker and took in the two inner jibs.
And now and once again the squalls howled, and we held on, gaining nothing, yet losing nothing. We were blind but obstinate; to have gained something when everything might be lost beneath us gave us grip and courage. The thing had been alive; the gods too had blown, and we had been all but dissipated, but now we were conquerors, and the gaskets bound our dead prey to the yard.
Sancho's boat had remained at the port quarter, and into this Hanglip drove his crew while Spotted Dog with the rest of the men got ready an anchor to lower to them. "Caliban, cast off the gaskets from fore and main!" cried Dolores next. "Where are thy rascals? Plague take thee, hunchback! Couldst not say there were not men enough? Below with ye, and bring up the schooner's people.
If you are quick about it, you may yet get the gaskets round it before the gale strikes us; if you are not, we shall lose the sail, and very probably some of you, too." The men answered with a cheery "Ay, ay, sir," and set to work with a will, Leicester and the chief mate springing aft to the wheel at the same moment.
Ben Stubbs it was who finally volunteered to crawl out, and two other American seamen followed him. They succeeded, although in deadly peril half a dozen times, in getting the jib gaskets cast loose, and then crawled back half frozen to receive the warm plaudits of the officers and more substantial rewards later on.
True, the wind itself tore our canvas out of the gaskets, jerked out our topmasts, and made a raffle of our running gear, but still we would have come through nicely had we not been square in front of the advancing storm center. That was what fixed us.
"But you forgot to take a reef in it awhile back, didn't you?" I knew he was referring to the shout that warned Newman. I did not venture a reply. "So now you have put your tongue in gaskets," he commented, after a pause. "Too bad you didn't do it before. A long tongue is a very bad habit, my lad, and I do not allow my hands to have bad habits. I correct them so!"
On the night of December 24th a gale of wind came on from the south-east; one chain parted, and after riding until three o'clock in the morning of Christmas Day, the other chain also parted. The vessel drew eight feet, and was lying in between three and four fathoms of water. As soon as the second chain broke, Davy went up on the fore-yard and cut the gaskets of the foresail.
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