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Updated: June 7, 2025
Jones, the acting boatswain, who had charge of the deck, instantly observed the trifling mishap, and shouted an order for the sail to be temporarily clewed up, and for a hand to go aloft and bend the halyard afresh.
Abreast of him, to starboard, like a ghost of the storm, Chris saw the cook dashing apace with the schooner. Evidently, when washed overboard, he had grasped and become entangled in a trailing halyard. For three hours more, alone with this gruesome companion, Chris held the Sophie Sutherland before the wind and sea. He had long since forgotten his mangled fingers.
The boat heeled gunwale under, and suddenly, but the bowman kept his feet like a Blondin, dropped the boat-hook, and jumped to unlash the halyard; a wave buried the boat nose under and swamped me in my kennel; my heart stopped beating, and, scared out of my wits, I began to strip off my sodden clothes; but before I had half done the sail had been set; both men had miraculously fended the boat from a rock, which, by a moment's hesitation, would have smashed us in bits or buried us in the boiling trough formed by the eddy below it, and, with another desperate effort, we had slid from danger into smooth water.
But we found it, I forget where. "Come on!" shouted Halyard, waving his shawls furiously; "what the devil are you about up there?" He received our explanation with a sniff, and we trundled him aboard without further ceremony. "Don't run me across the plank like a steamer trunk!" he shouted, as I shot him dexterously into the cock-pit.
Meanwhile Nilsson had made a running bowline in the end of a loose halyard that was rove through a block aloft, and had been used for hoisting out the cargo. As the mandarin came up, he leaned over the coaming of the hatch, dropped the noose over the Chinaman's head, jerked it tight, and then he and Foucault hove on the fall of the rope.
By this time Grimme had descended from his perilous perch, having completed the reeving of the halyard. Without a moment's delay, he hastened to the spot where the angry man stood, and touched his cap with the utmost deference. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Hamblin. I hope you will excuse me," said Grimme, who really wore a very troubled look.
I swam to the main topsail halyard block, got on it, and sat upon it, and then I rode. The fore, main, and mizen tops were all above water, as were a part of the bow-sprit, and part of the ensign-staff, with the ensign upon it.
Now, then, one cheer for the American flag!" and as he said it, Sam drew forth a little flag which he had carried in all his wanderings, for use if he should need it, and ran it up to his mast head by a rude halyard which he had arranged in anticipation of some such adventure as this.
Alice let the flag fall at Hamilton's feet, when Beverley came near her smiling that great, glad smile, and with a joyous cry leaped into his outstretched arms. Jean snatched up the fallen banner and ran to Colonel Clark with it. Two minutes later it was made fast and the halyard began to squeak through the rude pulley at the top of the pole.
He cut the signal halyard into short lengths; then he cut the piece of canvas into strips about two inches wide and secreted the halyard and canvas strips here and there about his person.
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