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Updated: June 3, 2025
They knew their captain, and they knew the ropes on the blackest of dark nights. Blind men climbed aloft, and felt for foot-ropes and gaskets.
"Away aloft and loose the canvas" was now the word, upon which the men deserted the windlass; and whilst some swarmed aloft to cast off the gaskets from the upper sails others laid out upon the jib-boom to loose the jibs, the residue scattering about the decks to attend to the calls of their shipmates aloft to "let go the main-topgallant-clewlines" and to perform other similar operations of an equally mysterious character mysterious, at least, to Sibylla, who, at a hint from Ned, had ventured out on deck to look abroad upon the unwonted scene, and to watch the passage of the ship through the reef.
Folding it in inch by inch, they at length mastered the seeming resistless monster, and passing the gaskets round it, secured it to the yard. Those who for the first time see a topsail furled in a heavy gale may well deem it a terrific operation, and perilous in the extreme to those employed in it.
Then I felt it. A minute longer he waited, until assured, when, the dead carpenter forgotten, he burst out with orders to the wheel and the crew. And the men jumped, though in their weakness the climb aloft was slow and toilsome; and when the gaskets were off the topgallant-sails and the men on deck were hoisting yards and sheeting home, those aloft were loosing the royals.
Still, the risk had to be taken, and all that we could do was to minimise it as much as possible by taking every precaution. Accordingly the buntlines, clewlines, and leech-lines were cast off and very carefully overhauled, and the watch-tackle hitched to the halyards before any of us went up on the yards; then the gaskets were cast off, and the main topsail sheeted home.
The sheets and halliards were let go in a twinkling before we left the deck and the topsails dropped on the caps, as well as the jib downhaul manned and the spanker brailed up, so as to prevent our being forced farther upon the shoal; and, while we were shinning up the rigging, the clewlines and buntlines were hauled by the watch below, which got in all the slack of the sails preparatory to our passing the gaskets when we got aloft, thus enabling us to furl all the canvas, and make everything snug in less time than I take to tell of it.
It was well for them that they were on the weather side; had they been to leeward they would have been torn from their grasp, whereas they were now pinned to the rigging. Two sounds like the explosion of cannon were heard. The main and foretopsails both blew out of their gaskets, bellied for an instant, and then burst from the bolt-ropes and flew away, and were speedily lost to sight.
Block was ordered to send down all the light yards and sails; to take in and furl everything, using storm gaskets, except on the fore and main storm staysails; to lash everything on deck; to batten down the hatches, except one square of the main; see all the shifting boards in place, so that our living cargo would not be thrown to leeward higgledy-piggledy, and to take four or five of the worst cases of the sick into the cabin and lay them on the floor.
It did not seem as if it could be Ben Lathrop who was standing shoulder to shoulder with Neddie Benson and old Davie. There was running and calling on all sides and aloft. Blocks were creaking as the men hauled at braces and halyards; and when the ship rolled I saw that the men on the yard-arms were shaking the courses from the gaskets.
In the meantime our lads had been anything but idle. With the activity of so many cats they had scuttled away aloft, laying out upon the yards, and casting off the gaskets in a style which must have done Mr Annesley's heart good, and which, to a moral certainty, considerably astonished the Frenchmen on board the surrounding ships and in the batteries.
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