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Updated: May 6, 2025
They then, having got up the hamper of fish, with the bread and the jar of water, veered the boat away with a hawser astern. They were now able for the first time to attend to the old man. They examined his head, and finding where he had been struck, bathed the place with water, and they also poured a few drops of water down his throat.
It was the first time I had been enabled to hold free converse with Aurore since the day of our betrothal. We were now alone for the faithful black stood sentinel below by the hawser of his pirogue. The reaction, consequent upon my late jealousy, had kindled my love to a renewed and fiercer life for such is the law of nature.
As soon as the yawl was seen approaching slings were prepared, and no sooner was the hawser securely fixed, than the slings were attached to it and a woman placed in them. The hawser was tight and the descent sharp, and without a check the figure ran down to the deck of the Seabird.
These he bound together by means of the sheets and halyards, attached the whole to a hawser, one end of which passed through an iron ring at the bow and tossed it into the sea paying out the hawser rapidly at the same time so as to put a few yards between them and their floating anchor if it may be so called in the lee of which they prepared to ride out the gale.
Cutting the great cable into pieces, such as I could move, I got two cables and a hawser on shore, with all the ironwork I could get; and having cut down the spritsail-yard, and the mizzen-yard, and everything I could, to make a large raft, I loaded it with all these heavy goods, and came away.
"At ten o'clock then comes a whistle from the shore, and anon in a shore-boat our master with a young man and woman well wrapped, and presently cuts the light hawser we rode by; and so we dropped down upon the tide and were out to sea by morning. "All this time we knew nothing of our two passengers; nor until we were past the Land's End did they come on deck.
Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half-stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, ye'll hear me crack; and till ye hear that, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet.
Thus the whip becomes a double line a sort of continuous rope, or, as it is called, an "endless fall," by means of which the lifebuoy is passed to and fro between the wreck and shore. The hawser is a thick rope, or cable, to which the lifebuoy is suspended when in action.
When the mast swung toward the cliff they took up the slack, thus saving the two from being dashed against the face of the rock, by rushing backward. When the mast whipped to seaward they advanced to the edge of the cliff. Five others hauled on each of the lines whenever the hawser was nearly taut, and paid out and pulled in with the slackening and tightening of the larger rope.
The water, at the same time, often rushed with great force up the rudder-case, and, forcing up the valve of the water-closet, the floor of his cabin was at times laid under water. The gale continued to increase, and the vessel rolled and pitched in such a manner that the hawser by which the tender was made fast to the buoy snapped, and she went adrift.
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