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Updated: June 16, 2025
Don't you remember that one we were looking at a few months ago, that came in here after the storm, to get a new jibboom?" "Why, of course I do, Pickle!" cried Uncle Paul eagerly. "Think of that, now!
And they both held. I could have kissed their rough, cold iron palms in gratitude if they had not been buried in slimy mud under ten fathoms of water. Ultimately they brought us up with the jibboom of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker nothing worse. And a miss is as good as a mile. But not in art. Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble, "She wouldn't luff up in time, somehow.
There was a grinding crash, a loud yell from the oncoming vessel; the Kestrel went over almost on her beam-ends, and then the stranger scraped on by her bows, carrying away bowsprit, jibboom, and the sails. "Chien de fool Jean Bool, fish, dog!" roared a voice from the side of the large schooner, for such Hilary could now see it was. "Vat for you no hoist light? I run you down."
When the spars came up he had one of them rigged with a tackle running to the foremast, and set its foot in the wooden contrivance just finished. It swung out forward like a great jibboom. The crew saw what was in the Captain's mind and gave a ringing yell of joy. A score of willing hands made fast the stays to windward and others spread the spare sail from the upper end of the spar.
Myriads of lights twinkle from headland to reef all round the world. Pilots are taught to find the way into the narrowest harbors, though they can scarce see beyond the ship's jibboom, and electric-lighted buoys mark the channel, while foghorns and sirens shriek their warnings through flying scud and mist.
The bowsprit had been sprung when the jibboom was wrenched from the cap by the fall of the top-gallant-mast; it still had to bear the weight of the heavy spritsail yard, and the drag of the staysail might carry the spar overboard with the men upon it.
She had fallen off a good bit, owing to the sluggishness with which the head yards had been swung, but she was already coming to, and a few seconds later her jibboom was pointing straight for the middle of the passage, with the Heads looming up on either hand, black as ebony against the faint shimmer of starlight on the waters of the lagoon beyond.
So she might have done with the greatest ease, but having fired our broadside just as her flying jibboom was touching our mainyard, we bore up, and her bow struck our larboard quarter. So great was the shock, that for the moment many thought we were going down, but instead of that our frigate was thrown athwart the `Minerve's' hawse, her bowsprit becoming entangled in our mizen rigging.
The "something pretty" was the brigantine, which was in sight about a mile away on our lee bow. She was in a terrible mess. Her fore and main royal masts and topgallant masts and jibboom had apparently all been carried away together, and she was almost lying on her beam ends. We ran down to her, and saw that her crew were busy in cutting away the spars and sails alongside.
"I was ganging forwarts," said Mr Macdougall, in the same hushed key, so that only Captain Billings and I could catch his words, "when a' at once I smeelt somethin' " "Ah, that raking flying jibboom of yours wasn't given you for nothing!" whispered the skipper, alluding to the mate's rather "pronounced" nose.
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