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Updated: May 16, 2025
Under ordinary circumstances, this last dignitary would have been of sufficient skill to take the ship in: but this was the first prize Lord Harry had taken; she promised to be valuable if condemned; and I suppose he and his young, gentleman-like luffs were desirous of getting rid of their vulgar associate. At any rate, Messrs. Sennit and Diggens both came on board us, bag and baggage.
"Just fancy!" observed one of those, speaking in an undertone, so that those of superior rank at the upper end of the table could not hear him. "Three `flags, four `posts, half-a-dozen commanders, and two `first luffs, all within range of that blessed muzzle that carried away; and not one vacancy on the list!"
"Indeed, then you can explain this manoeuvre to me, of course," and Mrs. Jessie read from another page the following nautical paragraph, "The wind is south-south-west, and we can have her up four points closer to the wind, and still be six points off the wind. As she luffs up we shall man the fore and main sheets, slack on the weather, and haul on the lee braces."
Even the lower rigging may be got off all ready fitted from the loft; while the runners and tackles, the luffs, and other purchases, may be put in preparation for use the moment there are hands enough to employ on them.
The next time they came out, we would notice their sticks cut down, their booms shortened, and their after-leeches nearer the luffs by whole cloths. As for excitement, there is all the difference in the world between a ship in trouble at sea, and a small boat in trouble on land-locked water. Yet for genuine excitement and thrill, give me the small boat.
And now over goes his helm, and there he rounds-to ah-h! look at that! on her beam-ends, by all that's no no she is righting again good! very prettily done, v-e-r-y prettily done indeed! Now she luffs! excellent! capital! You are all safe now, my man.
You've seen but little of the girl, Sergeant, and have not got the run of her knowledge; but let her pay it out freely, as she will do when she gets to be thoroughly acquainted, and you'll fall in with but few schoolmasters that can keep their luffs in her company."
I've fed ye both with all such articles, when ye was nothing but young gentlemen; and when you was no longer young gentlemen, too, but a couple of sprightly luffs, of nineteen. And as for moving the fleet, I know, well enough, that will never happen, without our talking it over in the old Planter's cabin; which is a much more nat'ral place for such a discourse, than any house in England!"
On this night, close-hauled, her big mainsail preposterously flattened down, her luffs pulsing emptily on the lift of each smooth swell, she was sliding an easy four knots through the water on the veriest whisper of a breeze. For an hour David Grief had been leaning on the rail at the lee fore-rigging, gazing overside at the steady phosphorescence of her gait.
"So I luffs up alongside, and fell aboard Er Oliness like a mighty great mountain above us she was, all poop, and galleries, and Armada fittins. "When our bow scraped her quarter, "'Anybody for the shore! pipes the Captain; and he jumps into her main-chain.... "Ah, but you should ha heard the men cheer!" The old man paused, breathing deep.
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