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Updated: June 7, 2025
Dan had for some time been bailing, having only undertaken the work in obedience to Vincent's angry orders, being too ill to care much what became of them. "Now, Dan, I am going to bring her head up to the wind, so get ready to throw off that halyard and gather in the sail as it; comes down. That's right, man; now down with the mast."
While he was thus engaged, the mate summoned him to assist in setting the fore-topmast staysail. He obeyed the call, though it was the first time he was ever called upon to do any duty, except to make fast, or cast off the fore-sheet. He was not a strong man, but he did the best he could at the halyard, and the mate was satisfied with him.
She was festooned with electric lights from the water line to the top of her towering steel masts. From every shroud and halyard hung garlands of light, and the flags which flew from her peaks were illumined with waving red, white and blue colours. From the water's edge floated the songs of Venetian gondoliers imported from Italy for the night's festival, moving back and forth from the yacht.
And all the while his gills were blowing out and frothing, and purring, and his lidless eyes looked into mine, until, nauseated and trembling, I dragged myself back to the beach, where already the pretty nurse alternately wrung her hands and her petticoats in ornamental despair. Beyond the cove, Halyard was bobbing up and down, afloat in his invalid's chair, trying to steer shoreward.
The weather was bad, with a succession of squalls from the southwest, and the captain kept in the lee of the line of keys instead of taking the straight course across the Gulf. But he carried all sail till the rotten main-sheet parted at the boom, and when he came up in the wind to lower the sail the main throat halyard refused to unreeve.
"I'd be glad now," said Peter, "if you'd make that same halyard fast to the cleat on the windward side any time you might be using the sail." "Do you think I'm a fool, Peter?" "I do not, Miss; but sure you know as well as I do that the mast that's in her isn't over and above strong, and I wouldn't like anything would happen." "There's no wind any way."
The blue-belted Trades! Day and day, week and week, the little curly, white-headed seas, the unspecked blue sky, and the ceaseless caress of the pursuing wind. No yard nor sail, never a bowline, sheet, or halyard to be handled, and the Bess bounding ever ahead. Beauty, peace, and a leaping log could the sea bring greater joy?
Many of the other names, too, were those of men no longer in favour. Yet the earlier volumes of the Voyage de Decouvertes had referred in the text to the names on the French charts as though they formed a final system of nomenclature. What was poor Freycinet to do in completing the work? Here, indeed, was a sailor hoist to his own yard-arm with his own halyard.
However, we completed the job at length, and then the same process had to be gone through with the fore topsail; and it was while we were dragging away at the halyard of this sail that Grace Hartley, upon whom we had not as yet found it necessary to call for help, came running forward to tell us that lights were beginning to flash out here and there in the settlement.
He stumbled to the sail; but his fingers were all thumbs, and he could not untie the halyard. I was obliged to do it myself, for the sail had filled aback, and it was retarding the progress of the raft. "Help! Save me!" cried the unhappy person again, but fainter than before, as hope appeared to desert her. "Hold on a moment more!" I shouted to her.
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