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Updated: May 21, 2025
My thoughts ran, too, as much upon what I was about to see, so that beyond taking a tight hold, and keeping my spyglass buttoned up in my jacket, I paid little heed to the height I was getting, I reached the head of the topmast, and then began to mount the rattlins of the main-topgallant mast, whose cross-trees seemed to be a tremendous height above my head.
Upon this there were no rattlins, nothing to rest the foot upon nothing but the two black rigid ropes converging until they met at the head of the mast. How could I ascend them? It seemed beyond my power to do so. But I was not even allowed to hesitate.
The soil hung upon him, he slouched over the deck, as if he were walking over the furrows of ploughed land, and looking up into the rigging, as if he saw a cock-pheasant at roost upon the rattlins. For the sake of the fit of romance that I felt for his father, I took some kind notice of this yokel afloat.
Pickle; who replying, with a look expressing curiosity, "No, never;" he thus went on: "Well, you seem to be an honest, quiet sort of a man; and therefore you must know, as I said before, I fell in with a French man-of-war, Cape Finistere bearing about six leagues on the weather bow, and the chase three leagues to leeward, going before the wind: whereupon I set my studding sails; and coming up with her, hoisted my jack and ensign, and poured in a broadside, before you could count three rattlins in the mizen shrouds; for I always keep a good look-out, and love to have the first fire."
Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlins, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, churming an inarticulate melody, he seemed almost apparitional, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in a winding-sheet, crowned with a halo. The influence of the incomprehensible phantasma which hovered about Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him.
It seemed to be a very long way down to the deck, but I reached the remaining few rattlins at last, and I was nearly down to the bulwarks, meaning to go below and bathe my head, if I could leave the deck, when I was stopped short, just in my most gloomy and despondent moments, by the captain's voice, his words sounding so strange that I could hardly believe my ears.
My heart began to beat before I reached the main shrouds, and it beat more heavily as I toiled up the rattlins, reached the top, and then went on again, too much excited to think of there being any danger of falling, my mind being partly occupied with thoughts of what Barkins and Smith were saying about my being favoured in this way.
It was a rough school for a child, but I throve in it, and learned many things, though some of them I had better not have learned. The captain seemed a stern and morose man, and for many months he took no notice of me; but one day as I was trying to climb up the rattlins of the lower shrouds I fell to the deck.
Away up the rattlins we all climbed again; while those below, on the halliards being started by the run, began hauling on the clewlines and buntlines, bagging up the sail so that we could hand it easier.
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