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Updated: May 21, 2025
With the jib still drawing full, the Isabel continued steadily on her course, while Dan and Cyd put a double reef in the mainsail, Quin standing at the helm in the mean time, and acting under the direction of the skipper. "Now, up with it," added Dan, when the reef-points were all taken up.
It's punishment bad enough for a little scamp like him leaving the honest shore, and folks to home that were a bit tender of him maybe, to rough it on a trader, learning how to slush down a back-stay, or tie reef-points with frozen fingers in a snow-squall. But that's not the worst of it, by no means.
Then, as the men began, with loud cries, to drag upon the reef-tackles, Leslie shouted "Call all hands, carpenter, to close-reef topsails. Look alive, lads; if you are smart you may have time yet to get those reef-points knotted before the squall strikes us. Well there with the reef-tackles. Belay! Now away aloft with you all, and hurry about it.
When I got to my station, the former watch was still aloft, tying their last reef-points, from which they soon straggled down, morosely conscious that they had lost ten minutes of their one watch below, and would have to be on deck again at four.
There were swift commands on deck, a stamping of feet and a slapping of reef-points as the Ghost shot into the wind and about on the other tack. As she filled away and heeled, the arm-chair began to slide across the cabin floor, and I sprang for it just in time to prevent the rescued woman from being spilled out.
We would be staggering under a whole main-sail, when the other smacks had three reefs in theirs; and it was odds but we had one line of reef-points triced up, when our neighbours would be going at it under storm-trysail and storm-jib. He worked the Lively Nan hard, he did, did Captain Goss.
No sound broke on our ears save the soft puff now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck lolled in sleepy indolence, overcome with excessive heat.
But she swung obediently on her heel into the wind. There was a great fluttering and flapping of canvas and reef-points, most welcome to my ears, then she filled away on the other tack.
The reef-points pattered as the yacht rolled gracefully from side to side on the gentle heave of the Mediterranean's bosom. Sitting on a rug on the deck, between my mother and Nicholas, Bella said, in a low quiet tone, "This is perfect felicity." "Agreed," said Nicholas, in a similar tone, with a puff from his cigar. Bella referred to the calm, of course!
No sound broke on our ears save the soft puff now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck lolled in sleepy indolence, overcome with excessive heat.
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