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Updated: June 3, 2025
There was no sail now on the ship, but the spanker and the close-reefed main topsail, which still held good. But this was too much after sail, and order was given to furl the spanker. The brails were hauled up, and all the light hands in the starboard watch sent out on the gaff to pass the gaskets; but they could do nothing with it.
Her deck was beautifully white, the lofty spars well scraped and freshly varnished, and the network of new rigging set her off to the greatest advantage. The new suit of sails were all bent, and lay loose in their gaskets ready for dropping. Four guns were ranged along either side. “She is a handsome craft indeed,” Mr.
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.
"She was under her gaff tops'l, but I see she couldn't stand it. 'Boys, says I, 'clew up that tops'l. Which they did, and put it in gaskets, and your Arthur, I mind, was one of the four men to go aloft to clew it up. Never a lad to shirk was Arthur.
Sometimes the mate was a person of artistic taste, and in that case they would be given bucket strops or man ropes to graft, or turkheads and grafting to work on to some deck arrangement or yardarm, and bunt gaskets to work with marline.
Throwing aside the gaskets, she stripped the sail covers off the mainsail and began, with practiced hands, to reef down to the third reef. Then she went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later, hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory, like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both sails.
She fell on them with the groan of a living creature, and, the instant her head was down, the white lions of the sea leapt over her with a howl, the water swirled through her bulwarks and filled her hatches, her rudder was unshipped, her sails were torn from their gaskets, and the floating home wherein men had sailed, and sung, and slept, and laughed, and jested, was a broken wreck in the heavy wallowings of the waves.
He "lay out" as best he could and cast off the gaskets he knew barely enough of yachting to understand an order here and there and by the time he was back on the fo'c'sle head the Chinamen were at the jib halyard and hoisting away. "That's well, y'r jib halyards." The "Bertha Millner" veered round and played off to the wind, tugging at her anchor. "Man y'r windlass."
"Get up ze mainsail and break out ze hook!" the Frenchman shouted. "And den tail on to ze Reindeer! No side-lights!" "Come! Cast off those gaskets lively!" 'Frisco Kid ordered. "Now lay on to the peak-halyards there, that rope cast it off the pin. And don't hoist ahead of me. There! Make fast! We 'll stretch it afterwards. Run aft and come in on the main-sheet! Shove the helm up!"
Do you see the lot of us there, putting a neat furl on the sails of that ship doomed to arrive nowhere? There was not a man who didn't think that at any moment the masts would topple over. From aloft we could not see the ship for smoke, and they worked carefully, passing the gaskets with even turns. 'Harbour furl aloft there! cried Mahon from below. "You understand this?
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