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Updated: May 25, 2025
"Come, my men," I heard Mr Mackay calling out, as I at last put my foot down to feel for the nearest ratline before commencing to descend the rigging, "look sharp with that fore-tops'le or we'll have it go like the mizzen!" His words were prophetic.
Lance and Brook at once scrambled up to the narrow ledge before the entrance, taking with them the ratline and such other small matters as they could carry, while Captain Staunton and Rex remained below to "bend on" and send up the remainder. Many hands especially if they be willing make light work, and a quarter of an hour sufficed to transfer everything, themselves included, to the ledge.
"Ay, ay, sir," answered Collins; and the reply was followed by the shuffling sound of several pairs of feet, the owners of which came shambling into the room the next moment, with naked cutlasses in their hands, while one of them carried, in addition, a length of some three or four fathoms of ratline.
In walking along her gun-deck, he accidentally ran against a ratline, by which one of her starboard guns was discharged. At this sound, the British galleys and gunboats, which had been lying quietly with their ensigns down, got out oars and moved off up the lake. The Americans had no vessels fit for pursuing them, and they were allowed to escape.
The place was almost like a museum in the variety of its contents; and they were not long in confiscating a dozen fathoms of three-inch rope, the remains of a coil of ratline, a small ball of spun-yarn for seizings, a sledge-hammer, an axe apiece, a marline-spike, a few long spike-nails, which Lance decided would be capital tools for the ladies to use in picking out the nuggets, and a few other trifling matters.
In an instant I had all four of the buoys ready, and two of them bent on to the longest rope-ends I could lay my hands on, and, in another, that glorious Bob appeared with a coil of ratline on his shoulder and a lighted blue-light in his hand.
The lugsail was then unbent from the yard, stretched across the mast, fore and aft thus forming a sort of tent over the open boat for about two- thirds of her length from the stern-post, and the luff and after-leach of the sail were then strained tightly down to the planking of the boat outside, by short lengths of ratline led underneath the gig's keel.
A wide-awake passenger who happened to be standing near the taffrail instantly took a knife from his pocket, and cutting loose a life-buoy which was fastened to the starboard quarter ratline, promptly threw it towards the man in the water as he floated away from the ship. The sailor saw it, and being a good swimmer struck out for and reached it.
The last of the fish had been whipped out, and Harvey leaped from the string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand Disko the tally, shouting, "Two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!" "What's the total, Harve?" said Disko. "Eight sixty-five. Three thousand six hundred and seventy-six dollars and a quarter. 'Wish I'd share as well as wage."
There was part of a coil of brand-new ratline close to my hand, which would serve my purpose admirably, I therefore whipped out my knife and cut off as much as I required, seized a double handful of oakum and a belaying-pin with which to form a gag, cut off a length of marline with which to secure the gag in place, and then, having made a running bowline in the end of my length of ratline, I stole, still in my stocking feet, to the door, and very cautiously peered out at Jose.
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