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Updated: May 24, 2025
Many a time I've took my trick at the wheel when the most I hoped for was three minutes t' say my prayers. "'Skipper, sir, we used t' say, when 'twas lookin' black an' nasty t' win'ard an' we was wantin' t' run for the handiest harbour, ''tis like you'll be holdin' on for Rocky Cove. Sure, you've no call t' run for harbour from this here blow! "'Stand by that mainsheet there! he'd yell.
"Keep her away a little, D'Arcy," said Hanks. The smugglers had been watching us without apparently suspecting our intentions. "Now, hard up! ease off the mainsheet! hook on! follow me, my lads!" As Hanks uttered the last words we had run alongside. The next moment he leaped over the bulwarks of the lugger on to her deck, and grappling with her captain, a Frenchman, tripped him up.
"Hands by the clue-garnets and buntlines man the mainsheet let go those leech-lines, youngster haul aboard." "It's a pity, too, by God," said the captain, looking over the hammock-rails at the French vessel, which was now running before the wind right on to the shore. "Eight or nine hundred poor devils will be called to their last account in the course of a few minutes. I wish we could save them."
There was the headsail to haul to windward, which was difficult, and the mainsheet to get in; then the two men, standing on the slippery, inclined deck, struggled hard to haul the canvas down to the boom.
The night seemed preternaturally still, the silence which enveloped us being so profound that the noises of the ship the occasional heavy flap of her canvas, accompanied by a rain- like pattering of reef-points; the creak of the jaws of the mainboom or of the gaff overhead on the mast; the jerk of the mainsheet tautening out suddenly to the heave of the schooner; the kicking of the rudder, and the gurgling swirl of water about it and along the bends only served to emphasise while they broke in upon it with an irritating harshness altogether disproportionate to their volume.
Van Weyden!" he cried, and I heard through the tumult as one might hear a whisper. "Stand by that jib with Johnson and Oofty! The rest of you tail aft to the mainsheet! Lively now! or I'll sail you all into Kingdom Come! Understand?" And when he put the wheel hard over and the Ghost's bow swung off, there was nothing for the hunters to do but obey and make the best of a risky chance.
Jacky, forward with the jib-sheet in his capable little fist and the bail bucket handy, scowled darkly at the gale, being alert as a cat, the while; and the skipper, his mild smile unchanged by all the tumult, kept a hand on the mainsheet and tiller, and a keen, quiet eye on the canvas and on the vanishing rocks whither we were bound.
The order had been given to keep the helm up and to stand by the mainsheet, in expectation of the lugger's running off the wind, when, quick almost as thought, the mizen-halyards were spliced, and the sail was again hoisted up. "Never mind, my lads; try and wing him again," cried my uncle. The men answered with a cheer, and several of our shot told.
The boatswain's pipe sounded, his gruff voice reiterated the order, and the men, who had been grouped together on the forecastle discussing the singular appearance of the weather, sprang to their stations. "Main and peak halliards let go! Man the main-tack tricing-line and down with the throat of the sail; round-in upon the mainsheet! Now, then, is there no one to attend to the peak downhaul?
"'Some sail-needles and a ball o' twine, I hollered back; 'we got everything else. You should just a-heard him cuss " and one of Captain Bob's laughs rang through the room. "Them's two things I'd forgot didn't think o' them in fact till the mainsheet give 'way. "Well, he chucked 'em aboard with another cuss. I hadn't no money to pay no salvage.
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