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We could manage to make some coarse lines out of some rope-yarns which had been thrown into the boat with the canvas; we could cut rods from the younger trees which grew around; and there were plenty of projecting masses of rock on which we might sit and angle; but a very important portion of our gear was wanting we had no fishing-hooks. "Has any one a file?" asked Silva.
He cut the flannel lining from his coat, and from that of the sleeves made nether garments for the little limbs, doubling the surplus length over the ankles and tying in place with rope-yarns from a boat-lacing.
Under these circumstances, he came to anchor, and sent off the boat to give intelligence of their distress to their companions. In their extremity of want, they took up part of the floor of the cabin, and patched up a sort of tray with rope-yarns, to paddle on shore to get a little water to preserve their lives.
The wire used was generally as thick as sailor's marline stuff, or two twisted rope-yarns. It contained, as a rule, some sixteen barbs to the foot. The wire used in front of our lines was generally galvanized, and remained grey after months of exposure. The enemy wire, not being galvanized, rusted to a black colour, and shows up black at a great distance.
It was never used but for rope-yarns, being cut up in lengths, and untwisted for the ignominious purpose of tying things up "hardly good enough for that," was the verdict upon it.
Each member of the crew is armed with three tarry rope-yarns, knotted at the ends. Then between the master-at-arms with a drawn sword and two corporals with drawn swords behind, the thief, stripped to the waist, is placed. The thing is started by a boatswain's mate givin' him a dozen lashes.
Without wasting a single moment in watching the progress of the boat, I at once slipped forward, and, gently drawing over the slide of the fore- scuttle, slipped the hasp over the staple, stuffed a few doubled-up rope-yarns through the latter to keep the former in position, and then quietly walked aft.
As it was January when we arrived, and the middle of the southeaster season, we came to anchor at the distance of three miles from the shore, in eleven fathoms water, and bent a slip-rope and buoys to our cables, cast off the yard-arm gaskets from the sails, and stopped them all with rope-yarns.
His ill-favored and weather-beaten visage was covered with streaks of paint, like the face of a wild Indian on the war-path. He had a thick beard made of oakum; and a wig of rope-yarns, the curls hanging gracefully on his shoulders, was surmounted with a paper cap, fashioned and painted so as to bear a greater resemblance to the papal tiara than to the diadem of the ocean monarch.
Here everything was pretty much as we left it the large bay without a vessel in it; the surf roaring and rolling in upon the beach; the white mission; the dark town and the high, treeless mountains. Here, too, we had our south-easter tacks aboard again, slip-ropes, buoy-ropes, sails furled with reefs in them, and rope-yarns for gaskets.
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