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"We've got 'em where we want 'em! Close-hauled! We'll holystone 'em an' slush 'em with hot tar if they give any trouble! Come on!" Another instant and, despite his age and the crippling effects of rheumatism caused by exposure in all sorts of weather, Tin-Back had leaped to the schooner's deck. He was followed by Roy, Allen and a couple of sturdy fishermen, who had been picked up on the beach.
Hose, mops, and holystone, until the teak looked as if it had just left the Rangoon sawmills; then the brass, every knob and piping, every latch and hinge and port loop. The care given the yacht since leaving the Yang-tse might be well called ingratiating. Never was a crew more eager to enact each duty to the utmost with mighty good reason.
The holystone is a large, soft stone, smooth on the bottom, with long ropes attached to each end, by which the crew keep it sliding fore and aft, over the wet, sanded decks. Smaller hand-stones, which the sailors call "prayer-books," are used to scrub in among the crevices and narrow places, where the large holystone will not go.
No more to be trampled and stamped upon with shifty, sloppy feet no more to be scrubbed and scored with sand and holystone; painted white, it creaks gratefully every time it swings the symbol of security, the first outward and visible sign of home, the guardian of the sacred rights of private property, the embodiment of the exclusive.
I wish my mother could see it or, on second thoughts, I don't; for I know that her first act would be to prepare gallons of hot water, and to holystone the whole place down, from garret to cellar and I know by my own small experience what that means. Well, that's as far as I've got as yet. What trivial, trivial stuff, interesting to hardly a soul under heaven, save only about three!
Holystone decks and wash down, ye lazy lubber." Jack groaned and scowled as he rolled over to ease his aching bones. He was in no mood for jesting. There was no land in sight nor the gleam of a sail, naught but the empty waste of the Atlantic, and the wind still held westerly. "Let's have the beggarly morsel you miscall breakfast, Joe, and a swig from the breaker. Are we bound across the main?"
The Philadelphia catechism is Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thou art able, And on the seventh, holystone the decks and scrape the cable. We crossed the Equator on October 1 and rounded Cape Horn early in November. Monday, November 17, was a black day in our calendar. At seven in the morning we were aroused from sleep by the cry of "All hands, ahoy! A man overboard!"
It was he who was sluicing the water about the poop so freely, while half-a-dozen of the crew vigorously plied the holystone and scrubber under his directions, and my first quick glance round the decks sufficed to show that the holystoning process was confined to the poop only, the cleansing of the main-deck seemed to be accomplished sufficiently by the application of the scrubber only.
I have seen oakum stuff placed about in different parts of the ship, so that the sailors might not be idle in the snatches between the frequent squalls upon crossing the equator. The "Philadelphia Catechism" is, "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able, And on the seventh holystone the decks and scrape the cable."
It may be interesting to give a few particulars concerning the traceable ancestors of the modern Dandie. In Mr. Charles Cook's book on this breed, we are given particulars of one William Allan, of Holystone, born in 1704, and known as Piper Allan, and celebrated as a hunter of otters and foxes, and for his strain of rough-haired terriers who so ably assisted him in the chase.
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