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Updated: June 9, 2025
Hard up the wheel! Check in port main and starboard cro'-jack braces! Shiver the topsail! Slack off that spanker!" Before he had finished the men had reached their posts. The orders were obeyed.
And they both held. I could have kissed their rough, cold iron palms in gratitude if they had not been buried in slimy mud under ten fathoms of water. Ultimately they brought us up with the jibboom of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker nothing worse. And a miss is as good as a mile. But not in art. Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble, "She wouldn't luff up in time, somehow.
He settled himself against the mast, gave a final polish to his hook with holystone, and using the hook every now and then to punctuate his narrative, began. "Let me see, 'twas a matter o' three years ago. I was bo'sun on the Swallow, a spanker she was, chartered by the Company, London to Calcutta.
The next morning when Harry went on deck he saw that the reefs had been shaken out of the topsails and the spanker hoisted. There was still a fresh wind, but it had backed round more to the south, and there was so sharp a nip in it that he went below and put on a pea-jacket. Then he beckoned to Bertie, who was off duty, to join him on the poop. "That has been a smart blow, Bertie."
Had the barbarians understood the construction of a vessel, they might have destroyed half the packet's crew while they were thus engaged about the forecastle by firing through the planks; but, ignorant of the weakness of the defences, they aimed altogether at the openings, or over the rails. By lowering the gaff the spanker was imperfectly bent; that is to say, it was bent on the upper leach.
At length the breeze reached us, and we made sail with our convoy to the southward and eastward, the lumbering merchantmen crowding every inch of canvass, while we could hardly keep astern, under close reefed topsails, foresail, jib, and spanker. "Pipe to breakfast," said the Captain to Mr Yerk. "A sail abeam of us to windward!"
"How now, Spanker!" exclaimed Lady Di., in a voice calculated to strike terror into the nerves of a horse "how now, Spanker!" and mounting him with masculine boldness of gesture "I'll teach you, sir, who's your mistress," continued she; "I'll make you pay for these tricks!" Spanker reared again, and Lady Di. gave him what she called "a complete dressing!"
By the gun lay Paul and three men; while several of the passengers, and a few of the best shots among the crew, were stationed on the forecastle, armed with muskets and fowling-pieces. "Is everybody ready?" called out the captain from the quarter-deck. "All ready!" and "Ay! ay, sir!" were answered from the different points of the ship. "Haul out the spanker!"
Spanker, in riding home full gallop the preceding day, had been thrown from her horse by an old woman. Faith, I couldn't believe the thing," added Lord George, with a loud laugh; "for she certainly sits a horse better than any woman in England; but my groom had the whole story from the grand-daughter of the old woman who was run over."
"Get in two of the jibs, and brail up the spanker." This was short work. When it was done the second mate, who had been working forward, looked to the captain for further orders. The latter had again gone below, but was now standing on the poop, talking earnestly with the first mate. "Yes, I think you are right," Bob heard the captain say.
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