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Updated: May 17, 2025
As the afternoon waned the breeze freshened; but Murgatroyd had by this time got preventer backstays rigged, fore and aft, with the avowed determination of carrying on and making the very utmost of so splendid a breeze.
We sprang aloft into the top; lowered a girt-line down, by which we hauled up the rigging; rove the tacks and halyards; ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards, as a preventer. It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but everybody worked with a will. Some, indeed, looked as though they thought the "old man" was mad, but no one said a word.
Mutual attachment between employers and employed is the panacea for all troubles yes, better than a panacea, the preventer of troubles.
The strength of all hands soon brought the tack to the boom-end, and the sheet was trimmed down, and the preventer and the weather brace hauled taught to take off the strain. Every rope-yarn seemed stretched to the utmost, and every thread of canvas; and with this sail added to her, the ship sprang through the water like a thing possessed.
Heaving on this, they brought the vessel parallel with the shore. So far, good. Guns and cargo lightered ashore, more anchors seaward to keep her off the beach, masthead tackles to the trees to heave her down, and preventer rigging and braces to assist the masts, would have been next in order, but they proceeded no further toward careening.
The wind had happily shifted to the westward, and though blowing with far greater fury than before, the ship was in less peril than she would have been had it continued in its former quarter. The yards were now squared and preventer backstays set up, and the carpenter, having examined the mast, reported that it was secure.
What could be done, however, was done; and the entire crew were set to work, some to get up preventer back-stays and secure the fore-mast, and others to convert the spare spars into jury-masts.
Encouraging himself thus, he grasped his preventer, and pulled about the debris in various places of which he had some suspicion; but the engines had done their work so effectually that not a spark remained.
Two nights after this, the wind still holding favourable, though rather fresher, so that our spars had as much as they could do, notwithstanding our preventer backstays, to bear the strain of our enormous spinnaker and balloon gaff-topsail, and the little Water Lily flying along at as our patent log told us over thirteen knots, we dashed past a half- consumed hencoop, a few charred pieces of planking, and some half-burnt spars, all of which had the appearance of having been but a short time in the water.
The great crojack was already off. But the watch could not clew up the mainsail, and, after much vain sing- songing and pull-hauling, the watch below was routed out to bear a hand. "My God!" Mr. Pike groaned to me. "Two watches for a rag like that when half a decent watch could do it! Look at that preventer bosun of mine!" Poor Nancy!
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