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Updated: May 21, 2025
“She is too far away yet to be certain,” Dimchurch said, “but I can’t help thinking she is French.” “At any rate, Dimchurch, our best course will be to lower the sail, shake the reef-points out, and have it ready for hoisting at a moment’s notice.
To lessen the speed of his progress towards the rock he attempted to reef the sails, but when he tried to knot the reef-points the wind pulled them away from him and the rope seared his hands. He saw three demons with wings of black skin having hooks at their ends, who, hanging from the rigging, were puffing with their breath against the sails.
Placing his cook and steward at the helm, he made the other men take reef tackles to the capstern, while he went alone aloft, lay out on the yard, passed the earings, and tied the reef-points, keeping an eye all the time at the helm, and directing his two faithful men by signs how to steer.
Leach bestirred himself, and the men were quickly on the yards, casting loose gaskets and reef-points. Sail opened after sail, and as the steerage passengers, who could show a force of thirty or forty men, aided with their strength, the Montauk was soon running dead before the wind, under every thing that would draw, and with studding-sails on both sides.
He, therefore, had no difficulty in carrying into operation his favorite scheme of KEEPING ALL HANDS AT WORK. A large quantity of "old junk" was put on board in Salem, and on the passage to Brazil, after we reached the pleasant latitudes, all hands were employed from eight o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the evening in knotting yarns, twisting spunyarn, weaving mats, braiding sinnett, making reef-points and gaskets, and manufacturing small rope to be used for "royal rigging," for among the ingenious expedients devised by the second mate for keeping the crew employed was the absurd and unprofitable one of changing the snug pole royal masts into "sliding gunters," with royal yards athwart, man-of-war fashion.
The sails of the schooner hung idly from the yards; her reflected image was distorted, but scarcely broken, by the long, gentle swell; her crew, with the exception of the watch, were asleep either on deck or down below; and so deep was the universal silence, that, as the vessel rose and fell with a slow, quiet motion, the pattering of the reef-points on her sails forcibly attracted the listener's attention, as does the ticking of a clock in the deep silence of night.
At length the word came, ``Haul out to leeward, and we seized the reef-points and hauled the band taut for the lee earing. ``Taut band knot away, and we got the first reef fast, and were just going to lay down, when ``Two reefs two reefs! shouted the mate, and we had a second reef to take, in the same way.
To tell you the truth, we hadn't thought of opening 'em not yet so that was kind of one on us, as you might say. But Jonadab ain't so slow but he can catch up with a hearse if the horses stop to drink, and he comes back quick. "Ily," he says, looking troubled, "you ought to sew reef-points on your mouth. 'Tain't safe to open the whole of it on a windy night like this.
Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the whaler, and though she was no beauty, yet, I tell you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had ever beheld as she lay with her main-topgallant-sail clewed up, her topsail yards on the caps, and the heads of men knotting the reef-points showing black over the white cloths, her hull floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea darkling from her into the east.
The Captain and first lieutenant the latter with a speaking-trumpet in his hand were both on deck, the skipper on the poop gazing eagerly into the thickness to leeward under the sharp of his hand in search of the now invisible stranger; barefooted seamen sprang nimbly hither and thither, some to the braces, some out on to the jib-booms, and others into the rigging on their way aloft to loose the furled canvas; the helm was put up, the fore yard swung, and the after yards squared as the ship paid off; and in less than a minute the yards were alive with men casting off gaskets, untying reef-points, overhauling gear, and generally preparing to clothe the frigate with canvas.
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