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"By jingo, I think he might say `splice the main brace' now, after all this jollification!" growled Mr Stormcock, who had come up on the quarter-deck while the ship was thus being made snug for the night and left now under easy sail, consisting of the courses with reefed topsails and topgallants, as well as the jib and spanker and foretopmast staysail.
In a short time the ship was prepared to face the worst. The topsails were close-reefed; the topgallant-masts sent down on deck; the spanker and jib were furled, and, soon after, the mainsail and foresail were also furled.
You said a spanking run, I think? 'Well, so I did, was the reply. 'It's very nigh, you know, observed the colonel. 'I'm glad it was a spanking run, cap'en. Don't mind about quarts if you're short of 'em. The boy can as well bring four-and-twenty pints, and travel twice as once. A first-rate spanker, cap'en, was it? Yes? 'A most e tarnal spanker, said the skipper.
Then the Helen B. did her favourite trick, and before we had time to say much we had a sea over the quarter and were up to our waists, with the parrels of the trysail only half becketed round the mast, and the deck so full of gear that you couldn't put your foot on a plank, and the spanker beginning to get adrift again, being badly stopped, and the general confusion and hell's delight that you can only have on a fore-and-after when there's nothing really serious the matter.
A little puff of wind on the larboard quarter, and then ``larboard fore braces! and studding-sail booms were rigged out, studding-sails set alow and aloft, the yards trimmed, and jibs and spanker in; when it would come as calm as a duck-pond, the man at the wheel standing with the palm of his hand up, feeling for the wind. ``Keep her off a little! ``All aback forward, sir! cries a man from the forecastle.
"Set the fore-topmast staysail!" hoarsely yelled the captain. "Send four hands aft to set the spanker!" Captain 'Siah did not know, when he gave this order, that three of his nine hands had been disabled, and the mate sent only three men aft, one of whom told the captain of the accident. But the passenger was as zealous and willing as even the mate.
At home, probably a family man, a wearer of mesh underwear, an assiduous devourer of the wisdom of George Harvey, a patron of the dramas of Charles Rann Kennedy, a spanker of children, an entertainer at his board of the visiting clergyman, a pantophagous subscriber, a silk hat wearer in brief, a leading citizen. See him oleaginate his grin at the sight of a passing painted paver.
First he hauled in the sheet, and then he hauled it out, with no result. "Brail the damned thing up!" he bawled at last, with a red face. "There ain't no sense in it." It was the last stroke of bewilderment for the poor captain, that he had no sooner brailed up the spanker than the vessel came before the wind.
But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chiefly lived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and rencontres, she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail.
The sheets and halliards were let go in a twinkling before we left the deck and the topsails dropped on the caps, as well as the jib downhaul manned and the spanker brailed up, so as to prevent our being forced farther upon the shoal; and, while we were shinning up the rigging, the clewlines and buntlines were hauled by the watch below, which got in all the slack of the sails preparatory to our passing the gaskets when we got aloft, thus enabling us to furl all the canvas, and make everything snug in less time than I take to tell of it.
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