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Updated: June 7, 2025
At this moment, the sail-trimmers of the Plantagenet handled their braces. The first pull was the last. No sooner were the ropes started, than the fore-top-mast went over the bows, dragging after it the main with all its hamper, the mizzen snapping like a pipe-stem, at the cap.
A heavier lurch than ordinary sent her main channels grinding down on the mackerel boat's gunwale, smashing her upper strakes and springing her mizzen mast as she recovered herself. "Be dashed," said one of the officers, "if I trust myself in a boat that'll go down under us between this and land!" The rest seemed to be of his mind, too.
He stopped at the door, and said, "Doctor, the saltcellar is by you. Would you mind bringing it on deck? We shall want a little to secure the animal." So they all went on deck right merrily. The captain went up a few ratlines in the mizzen rigging, and looked to windward, laughing all the time: but, all of a sudden, there was a great change in his manner. "Good heavens, it is alive LUFF!"
Drawing near the shore, the grim, black spars and waspish hull of a small man-of-war craft crept into view; the masts and yards lined distinctly against the sky. She was riding to her anchor in the bay, and proved to be a French corvette. This pleased our captain exceedingly, and, coming on deck, he examined her from the mizzen rigging with his glass.
No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn. Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the main and mizzen mast-heads were already drowsy.
"Well, if you don't know it, sonny, which I can hardly believe on, and wants for to know to improve your mind, which needs a lot of improvement, as I knows, that theer signal, Tom, was that cruiser we saw out at Spithead yesterday a-trying her speed at the measured mile, the Mercury, I thinks she is, axin' the port-admiral if she might have her sailin' orders; and look there, sonny, the `affirmative' 's now run up at the mizzen aboard the Dook, over yonder!"
For three stormy days the ship had been charging along before a wind that had increased to a gale, and a following sea that threatened to climb aboard. The jib-topsail, the skysails and royals, the lighter middle staysails, and the fore and mizzen topgallantsails had been blown away, and the ship was practically under topsails, a bad equipment of canvas with which to claw off a lee shore.
In most large ships there are three masts, each having three parts. The centre mast, being the largest, is the main-mast; the front one, which is next in size, is the fore-mast; and the one next the stern, the smallest, is called the mizzen. Although we have spoken of lower-masts for the sake of clearness, the name is never used. The name of the mast itself designates the lower part of it.
Lord Reginald managed the mizzen, while Dick rehoisted the foresail and mainsail. The rudder, it should have been said, was fitted with long yoke-lines, which, being led well forward, made the operation of steering more easy than it would otherwise have been. "I suspect that in a heavy sea we shall find that the Janet doesn't come about as well as we should wish," observed Lord Reginald.
There was a large hogshead with two or three small barrels upon the raft; and around its edge were lashed several empty casks, serving as buoys to keep it above water. A single spar stood up out of its centre, or "midships," to which was rigged in a very slovenly manner a large lateen sail, either the spanker or spritsail of a ship, or the mizzen topsail of a bark.
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