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Updated: June 28, 2025
All these things I contrived to get alongside the foremast without interrupting the labours of the others. Hawsepipe evidently knew how to construct a raft upon scientific principles. The foremast he took for a sort of foundation or keel, laying the two topmasts, one on each side and parallel to it, at a distance of about ten feet.
The No. 5 heaved anchor, the chain clanking and chattering in a hawsepipe. Her exhaust spat smoky, gaseous fumes. A bell clanged. She moved slowly ahead, toward the river's mouth, a hundred yards to one side of it. Then the brown web of the seine began to spin out over the stern.
With a hammer he knocked out the stopper; the starboard anchor dropped and the red rust flew from her hawsepipe as the anchor chain screamed through it.
Bending the end of this warp securely to the piece of timber, Hawsepipe and I then swam to the foremast, and hauling upon the warp, soon had the rest of the party there also.
We had been thus engaged for about a quarter of an hour, the lightning raging round us all the while in undiminished fury, when, in an instant, down came the rain in a perfect flood. "Shut the ports!" yelled Hawsepipe.
Some time during the night I was awakened by Hawsepipe, whose trick at the helm it was. He aroused me by giving me a feeble shake on the shoulder, and, being by this time unable to speak, raised his hand and pointed skyward. I looked up and saw that the firmament was obscured by heavy masses of cloud, which held out the promise of a speedy fall of thrice-blessed rain.
The living were carried aft to the cabin, where the surgeon, assisted by Hawsepipe, devoted all his energies to their restoration, while the quarter-master and I returned to the deck to look after the safety of the ship.
What sail shall we get her under?" "Well, being, as you remark, in no sort of hurry, I think we will make our precautions as complete as possible by stowing everything except the fore-trysail and staysail. Let the men commence with the mainsail, as it is the largest and least manageable sail in a breeze." "All hands, shorten sail!" sang out Hawsepipe.
Thus Mr Hawsepipe, in as authoritative a tone as though he were the first luff of a 120-gun ship.
Hawsepipe had rigged steering-gear to the raft by lashing a piece of deck-plank, some twelve feet long, to the schooner's foremast in such a way that half of it was immersed in the water and acted as a rudder, while the other half slanted in over the raft and served as a tiller; it was, in fact, a rude substitute for a steering-oar.
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