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Updated: June 2, 2025
"It 'ud be a shame of a man like me not to know all as you said this mornin', sir leastways I don't mean able to say it right off as you do, sir; but not to know it, after the Almighty had been at such pains to beat it into my hard head just to trust in Him and fear nothing and nobody captain, bosun, devil, sunk rock, or breakers ahead; but just to mind Him and stand by halliard, brace, or wheel, or hang on by the leeward earing for that matter.
"Japanese?" gasped Eph Somers, in turn. "Nothing but!" Eph made a swift dive for the box that contained the signal flags used in the international marine signaling code. Moving swiftly, young Somers selected the two flags representing "N" and "D." These he strung to the halliard of the short signal mast forward.
Suddenly the car slowed down at a signal from my companion and stopped. We got out. Not a sound was to be heard except the mournful hum of the distant threshing machine, but a peculiar clicking, like the halliard of a flagstaff in a breeze, suddenly caught my ear. The wind was rising, and as I looked around me I saw innumerable little tricolour flags fluttering against small wooden staves.
But not an inch of canvas did she lower, but floundered on in her stolid fashion, while a little black ball ran up to her peak, and the rare old flag streamed suddenly out from the halliard. Then again came the rap, rap, rap, of her little guns, and the boom, boom of the big carronades in the bows of the lugger.
The lugger had managed to bring her head sufficiently up into the wind for her broadside guns to bear, and the shot came hurtling overhead. The yard of the main-topsail was cut in sunder, and the peak halliard of the spanker severed, and the peak came down with a run. They could hear a faint cheer come across the water from the lugger.
Nor was I deceived in my expectations of him; for, very shortly afterwards, a shot from the schooner cut the halliard of the frigate's larboard lower studding-sail, and the sail dropped into the water, retarding the vessel's progress perceptibly until it was got in. It occupied the Frenchmen nearly a quarter of an hour to accomplish this, to splice the halliard, and to reset the sail.
He felt quite easy in his mind, however, and, stepping forward, let go the tiny halliard, whereupon the sail came down. "Now," he said, "we're just going to let her take her own way for an hour." This sailor-like resolution pleased his companion mightily, so the boat was allowed to wheel lazily, and curtsey to the slight waves as they set to the shore.
There appeared to be three corners to the spinnaker, and all three were hooked turn about on the end of the boom. Even when the third was unhooked again and the one which had been tried first restored to its place Priscilla seemed a little dissatisfied with the result. Another of the three corners was caught and held by the clip-hooks on the end of the halliard.
It had no other ballast than himself, his wife and children, and the Christmas fare. His son Bernt sat in the fore-part, his wife, with the help of the second son, held the halliard, and Elias sat at the helm, while the two younger boys, twelve and fourteen years of age, were to take turns at baling. A storm was gradually rising, and the foam-crests began to break on the great waves.
But the wind was light, and hardly strained the new rigging, while there was a stout running backstay set up with all care, and even the main halliard had been led far aft to serve as another.
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