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This gave me a good deal of trouble, for I wanted the spar on deck, not overboard; so I had to go to work to parbuckle it up the side, which I managed pretty well by watching the lift of the seas. Then I cut the mast in halves, laid the two halves parallel athwart the deck, and secured the yard and the tiller to them, as cross-pieces, with good stout lashings.
This formed a parbuckle, and when the men hauled upon the upper lengths of the ropes the cask easily rolled up to the ends of the lower lengths. This operation was repeated again and again, and gradually the cask moved up the rock.
After refitting, we went for a cruise to the East Indies, where we found the new admiral who had come out to replace Admiral Hope; and, in the spring of the following year, having served for eighteen months as a naval cadet, I was promoted to the rank of midshipman, the captain and first lieutenant, having convinced themselves of my competency by asking me how I would manage to get a six-pounder to the top of a perpendicular hill, my answer to which question was that I would head it up in a cask and "parbuckle" it up.
Then, having got the first gun on deck already prepared in Port Royal dockyard, by being encased in a stout cylindrical packing of planks we passed the bights of our two hawsers round it, one at each end, and with all hands tailing on except one, whom we set to watch as a sentinel proceeded to parbuckle it up the face of the cliff.
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