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Updated: May 24, 2025
He knew already the empty windiness of its threats, but he was careful of the mainsheet blocks, and walked around the traveller instead of over it.
There was another period of rushing, heavily listed, with the wind fair abeam. Now and then, as a squall struck the sails, Priscilla let the mainsheet run out and allowed the Tortoise to right herself. The sea was flecked with the white tops of short, steep waves, raised hurriedly, as it were irritably by the wind. A few heavy drops of rain fell. The whole sky became very dark.
"Do you think you could manage to get the pump under way?" I asked. "I would try," he replied; "but the well is on the larboard side, close by my feet, and deep under water." "Then," said I, "we must endeavour to get her round upon the other tack. We will watch for a `smooth, and directly it comes, you and Francois must round-in upon the mainsheet. Are you both ready?"
"Put your helm hard down and bring her to the wind!" roared Job, at the same time jumping toward the mainsheet. The schooner swung to starboard, heeling sharply as she caught the wind abeam, and was in hot pursuit of her enemy before a full minute had passed.
Rounding Point Richard, then, and hauling in the mainsheet, the voyagers found themselves suddenly under the lee of the land and in smooth water, save for the long undulations of swell that came sweeping up to them from the southward.
But I had to stick to the mainsheet and the yoke-lines, and do as best I could without rest, for the time being. Fortunately, as the day wore on, the wind moderated, until by nightfall it had dropped to such an extent that I was able to shake out first one reef and then the other, while with the moderating of the breeze the sea also went down until it was no longer dangerous.
Then, far away to the eastward there gradually arose a low moaning, and a sudden fierce puff of hot air struck us for an instant, filling the sails of the longboat with a loud flap and leaving them hanging motionless again. "Here it comes, lads," cried I. "Out with your starboard oars, and get the boat's head round. That will do. Lay them in again; and one hand tend the mainsheet here aft."
The slightest inattention to the belaying of a mainsheet while men are hanging on may mean that it breaks loose just as the men expect it to be fast, when away it goes, with awful suddenness and force, dragging them clean overboard before their instinctive grip can be let go. The slightest inattention to the seas may mean an equally fatal result.
'Do you know I saved your life? returned the other, not deigning to look at him, his eyes travelling instead between the compass and the sails. 'Where would you have been, if that boom had swung out and you bundled in the clack? No, SIR, we'll have no more of you at the mainsheet. Seaport towns are full of mainsheet-men; they hop upon one leg, my son, what's left of them, and the rest are dead.
But he was deflected by the crash of the mainsheet blocks on the stout deck-traveller, as the mainsail, emptied of the wind and feeling the wind on the other side, swung crazily across above him. It was Jerry's first experience with sails of any sort.
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