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Updated: June 2, 2025
Believing my best policy would be to join those busied on deck, just as though I belonged among them, I crept down the forecastle ladder, and worked my way aft beneath the black shadow of the port rail, until able thus to drift unnoticed into a group tailing on to a mainsail halliard.
The Virginie's crew were kept carefully out of sight, except some three or four hands, who were ostentatiously posted on the forecastle, with orders to assume an appearance of deep interest in the approach of the barque; but Bowen had carefully placed each man exactly where he wanted him, and as the Aurora came sweeping down upon the brig, invisible hands on board the latter gradually tautened up halliard, brace, tack, sheet, and bowline, until by the time that the two ships were within a mile of each other, every trace of slovenliness on board the Virginie had vanished, every sail was standing as flat as a board, and the brig was once more in a condition to be worked to the best advantage.
"Nothing to complain of, boys, till just as we had her in the wind's eye to shoot the gear," said the senior skipper. "A big swell in knee-breeches opened the door and called out our names, when I was brought up all standing, for I saw that the peak halliard was fast on the port side. The blame thing was too small for me to shift over, so I had to leave it.
"You bear all that in your mind, and remember that each halliard and sheet has the name of the sail to which it is attached, and you will have learnt enough to make yourself useful, and can lend a hand when the skipper calls out, `Haul in the jib sheet, or `Let go the fore halliards. Now sit yourselves down again and see what is doing.
A few ropes were cut away, but no serious damage was effected until a shot struck one of the halliard blocks of the spanker, and the sail at once ran down. "It has taken a big bit out of the mast, too," the boatswain called exultingly to Cyril. "I think that will rouse the Dutchmen up." A minute later it was evident that the shot had at least had that effect.
The natives haul at the line as sailors haul at a halliard.
It is no thicker than a flag halliard." "It is thin, Father, but there is no fear as to its strength. I tested every yard of it, and found it would bear six hundred weight." "Well, that is ample; but how is one to hold on to a cord like that?" "That is just what we want you to tell us, Father. There must be some way of managing it, if one could but hit upon it."
The spray dashed in their faces, and Bernt and his next youngest brother Anton, who till now had helped his mother with the halliard, were at last obliged to hold the yard, an expedient resorted to when the boat cannot even bear to go with the last reef in this case the fifth.
She was under boom-foresail and one little jib, with her mainmast broken short off where the bolts of the halliard blocks had traversed it. Dampier realized that every knot the vessel made then could not be recovered that season. He wondered, with a little uneasiness, what Wyllard would say when he came to himself again.
"It would serve you divils right if it did. But, heavens, the storm's upon us!" He slammed to the cabin door, and securely bolted it. He next leaped across the deck-load and tore loose the halliard. Instantly the sail came down with a rush, the gaff striking the boom with a bang. Across the hills came the storm.
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