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Updated: May 24, 2025
A pull to windward on the mainsheet backed the big mainsail and drove the stern towards the dock, whereon a mob of naked brown men awaited the casting of shore lines. The starboard quarter grated against the piling, and the open stern windows overhung the stringpiece for a moment.
"Send you back, my boys! No, no, too happy to get you." Another gun from the corvette. "Firebrands, you must shove off. My compliments, Wiggins, to the Captain, and there's a trifle for you to drink my health, when you get into port." The boat shoved off the corvette filled her maintopsail. "Put the helm down ease off the mainsheet stand by to run up the squaresail.
Hoist away the jib and staysail; fore-sheets over to starboard. One hand to the wheel and put it hard-a-port. Cut the cable, forward there. Round-in upon the starboard braces ease off your mainsheet, slack it away and let the boom go well out. Now she has stern-way upon her. Capital. Now fill your topsail smartly, lads! and haul aft your lee head sheets. Steady your helm. Now she draws ahead.
"A scream of a joke," I muttered, " one he'll roar over till God-knows-when!" "We can't go back, Miss Sylvia," the captain now said. "When our mainsheet parted the boom gybed so hard that it opened a seam. It may hold on this tack, and it may not, but we'd sink if the weather hit us on the other side. So I'm making for Key West."
In an instant we were attacked by the whole of the slaver's crew, who, with loud shouts and ferocious gestures, rushed aft, fully hoping, as they saw that the pinnace had dropped astern, to make us an easy prey. The mainsheet of the schooner had been eased off, the foreyards had been squared, and, with the now strengthening breeze, the schooner was running fast through the water.
We had just comfortably completed our work, and I had established myself at the tiller, with Giaccomo at the mainsheet, and Francois as the French lad called himself at the jib-sheet, when there came a terrific flash of lightning, green and baleful, illumining for a single instant the entire scene, and revealing our pertinacious friend, the "Vigilant," in her old berth astern, with her long tapering yards lowered to the deck, and two stumpy lugs and a pocket-handkerchief of a jib hoisted in their place.
With clenched teeth sat the boat-steerer, grasping the steering oar firmly with both hands, his restless eyes on the alert a glance at the schooner ahead, as we rose on a sea, another at the mainsheet, and then one astern where the dark ripple of the wind on the water told him of a coming puff or a large white-cap that threatened to overwhelm us.
Carroll had gone below; and, brushing his thoughts aside, Vane busied himself hauling in some of the mainsheet, while the water splashed more loudly beneath the bows. The great black firs rolled by in somber masses over his port hand, and presently the last of the lights were blotted out. He was alone, flitting swiftly and smoothly across the glittering sea.
And herein found they of old time a way wherein to drive their car: and I too follow with my burden of song: and all men's minds, they say, are stirred the most by whatsoever wave at the instant rolleth nearest to the mainsheet of the ship.
That's so, too it is a fine westerly, isn't it?" Clancy said nothing, only leaned against the rigging, not a move out of him puffing his pipe and looking away. Nobody spoke till the skipper spoke again. "Who's to the wheel you, Steve? How's she heading now?" "No'the by west." "No'the by west? Put her east by no'the ease off your mainsheet. Let it go to the knot.
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