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Quartermasters, go on deck with your seizings. When all is ready, you can then expostulate." The men obeyed my orders: they crawled on deck, rigged the gratings, and stood by. "All is ready, sir," said I, touching my hat to the captain. "Send the ship's company aft, Mr Paul." "Aft, then, all of you, for punishment," cried the boatswain. "Yes, it is all of us for punishment," cried one voice.
This passage, for no conceivable reason that I could devise, was always closed after the household had retired to rest, by drawing a heavy slide across it, composed of a dozen or more bits of wood, ingeniously fastened together by seizings of sinnate.
The united nets form what is called a train fleet, or drift of nets. The depth to which they are sunk is regulated by ropes seven or eight yards long, called seizings, of which there are two to each net. They are made fast to a stout warp, running along the whole of the train, which is upwards of a mile in length, and supported near the surface by kegs, called "bowls."
"There de watch," whispered Mesty; "all fast not ready for dem yet." Mesty blew out the candle, and they all retreated to the binnacle, where Mesty took out a coil of the ropes about the mizzen-mast, and cutting it into lengths, gave them to the other men to unlay. In a few minutes they had prepared a great many seizings to tie the men with.
A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and now for the seizings."
The bending of the staysail was no very serious matter; it simply meant letting go the halliards, dragging upon the downhaul, cutting the boltrope away from the hanks, passing the new seizings, hoisting the sail foot by foot until I had got all the seizings finished, bending the sheets afresh, and there we were. But to bend a topsail, single-handed, was a much more difficult job.
When she sails from port, her rigging is generally slack; the masts need staying; the decks and sides are black and dirty from taking in cargo; riggers' seizings and overhand knots in place of nice seamanlike work; and everything, to a sailor's eye, adrift. But on the passage home, the fine weather between the tropics is spent in putting the ship into the neatest order.
Vanslyperken and the corporal looked at each other during the time that Short was giving his directions neither interfered. The lieutenant was afraid, and the corporal waited for orders. So soon as the men had carried the lad below, Corporal Van Spitter put his hand up to his foraging cap, and with his cat and seizings under his arm, went down below.
When she sails from port, her rigging is generally slack; the masts need staying; the decks and sides are black and dirty from taking in cargo; riggers' seizings and overhand knots in place of nice seamanlike work; and everything, to a sailor's eye, adrift. But on the passage home the fine weather between the tropics is spent in putting the ship in the neatest order.
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