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Updated: June 8, 2025
Captain T gave his directions to the mate in private, and, except in coming to anchor, getting under weigh, tacking, reefing topsails, and other "all-hands-work," seldom appeared in person. This is the proper state of things, and while this lasts, and there is a good understanding aft, everything will go on well. Having furled all the sails, the royal yards were next to be sent down.
He was as active and daring as any of the crew, and he could soon lay out on the yards and assist in reefing topsails as well as anybody on board. He could soon, also, take his trick at the helm in fine weather; indeed, it was generally acknowledged that he gave good promise of becoming a prime seaman.
She did not reef as you and I do by sane reefing points, but in a gimcrack fashion with a long lace, so that it took half an hour to take in sail. Did she leak? No, I think not. It is a pious opinion. I think she was tight under the composition, but above that and between wind and water she positively showed daylight. She was a basket. Glory be to God that such a boat should swim at all!
Some writers have affirmed, that instead of reefing as we do, and as is pretty universal all over the world namely, by reducing the perpendicular height of the sail that the Japanese accomplish this by taking in sail at the sides, or laterally, by unlacing a cloth at a time.
The men liked them for that, and because they didn't blow about what they could do. I remember one day in a reefing job, the downhaul parted and came down on deck from the peak of the spanker. When the weather moderated, and we shook the reefs out, the downhaul was forgotten until we happened to think we might soon need it again.
In close reefing the main-topsail, there was much difficulty in clewing up the sail for the purpose of making it quiet, and the captain issued his orders accordingly from the quarter-deck, and sent us aloft. On gaining the topsail-yard, the most active and daring of our party hesitated to go upon it, as the sail was flapping about violently, making it a service of great danger.
And on this trip of ours, when not otherwise engaged, he was quite as busy with his fingers as ever: unraveling old Cape Horn hose, for yarn wherewith to darn our woolen frocks; with great patches from the skirts of a condemned reefing jacket, panneling the seats of our "ducks;" in short, veneering our broken garments with all manner of choice old broadcloths.
I had burst open the ends of my fingers at the very first, and during the reefing I had worked with tears of pain running down my cheeks. And when all was done, I gave up like a woman and rolled upon the deck in the agony of exhaustion. In the meantime Thomas Mugridge, like a drowned rat, was being dragged out from under the forecastle head where he had cravenly ensconced himself.
If the boat drove by them while they were reefing it might be difficult to pick her up afterwards in the dark. He was now distinctly anxious about her. Just as the light was dying out, the man in the shrouds sent down a cry. "I see them, sir!" he said. Dampier turned to Wyllard with a gesture of relief. "That's a weight off my mind.
When I got back to the shelter of the wheel-house, I found the captain and old Roberts still comfortably braced up in opposite corners and yarning away. There was nothing to be done but to watch the ship and the wind, which promised in due time to be a gale, but as yet was not even a reefing breeze. They had got upon a standing topic between the two, vessels out of their course.
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