Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
Tom put the question, and the party, in deep disgust, heard the man reply: "No, thank you; I think it's cruel to make the poor birds hurt each other." "Look here," said the good-natured Bozen, "the poor lubber's all gone in amidships see how flat his breadbasket is. I say, messmate," continued Bozen, with a roar, and a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, "come and splice the main-brace."
There was a "lubber's loop" in the bight of the sheet and as the young man loosed it his arm was caught in this trap. The boom swung viciously outboard and Lawford went with it. He was snatched like some inanimate object over the sloop's rail and, the next instant, plunged beneath the surface of the suddenly foam-streaked sea.
Todd, who had noticed a shade of testiness in the queries of the officers as to the exact location of the gold and diamonds, expressed a desire to climb the rigging next afternoon, a feat he had often wished to perform, which he did clumsily, going through the lubber's hole, and seated in the maintop with Mr.
"You said up there, didn't you? and now look yourself, and see where your tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by crawling through the lubber's hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you don't get there, except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It's a ticklish business, but must be done, or else it's no go. But none of us are in heaven yet.
Really, I quite astonished Tom by climbing up the futtock shrouds outside the top, instead of going through "the lubber's hole," showing myself, thanks to Tim Rooney's private instructions previously, much more nimble in casting off the gaskets and loosening the bunt of the sail than my brother mid expected; indeed, I got off the yard, after the job was done, and down to the deck a good half minute in advance of him.
"Man the topsail clewlines, and buntlines, and the weather topsail braces," shouted Haven, the first lieutenant who always handled the ship when all hands were called. "Stand by the lee braces, bowlines, and halyards." The clewlines are ropes fastened to the corners of the topsail, passing through blocks on the topsail yard, and leading down to the deck through the lubber's hole.
I leaped to one side and partially avoided the blow, and then rushing in towards the mast I looked down the lubber's hole to see if Brace was below. He was not visible, and I would have cried out for him, but my eyes at that moment rested upon two objects and caused me to hold my voice. Two individuals were upon the quarter-deck below, both looking upward.
Billings departed, and Denman grinned maliciously while he ate his dinner; and, after Billings had taken away the dishes with more comments on the woman's terrible punch Denman went out into the wardroom, intending to visit Miss Florrie. A glance overhead stopped him, and sent him back. The lubber's point on the telltale marked due west northwest. He sat down to think it out.
I also proceeded a day or two after, being thenceforth regarded as a neophyte no longer, to take part in all the regular drills of the ship, and one morning, subsequent to breakfast, underwent that rudimentary stage of seamanship styled `boxing the compass' though I might have really told the painstaking instructor, who painfully and ploddingly laboured to instil the cardinal points into my head as if I were an ignoramus, that I not only knew the `lubber's point' probably as well as he did, but could, on a pinch, have conned the ship in and out of Portsmouth Harbour!
A few trials of this kind will take away the giddiness felt on first mounting to a high elevation, and thus a boy may safely be denied the use of the lubber's hole, and may be sent up the futtock shrouds, and after that the topgallant shrouds, and so on to the royals, if there be any on the ship, and by thus gradually inducting him into the art of climbing, he will get over the difficulty without dread and without peril for both of these may be encountered in first climbing to the upper rigging of a ship.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking