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Updated: June 22, 2025
But I complained no more and set about making a tent of the sail for Maud. I had looked upon it as a simple task, what of the oars, mast, boom, and sprit, to say nothing of plenty of lines. But as I was without experience, and as every detail was an experiment and every successful detail an invention, the day was well gone before her shelter was an accomplished fact.
She was rigged with three masts in addition to the short spar which reared itself from the outer extremity of her bowsprit, and upon which the sprit topsail was set, the fore and main masts spreading courses, topsails, and what was then quite an innovation topgallant sails, while the mizen spread a lateen-shaped sail stretched along a sloping yard suspended just beneath the top, in the position occupied in these days by the cross-jack.
Jose had the presence of mind to slacken the sheet of the mainsail, while I leapt forward and lowered the sprit of the foresail, the two Indians standing stupefied in the prow. It was what the canoe-men call a trovoada secca or white squall.
The positions of these yards and the form of the sails may be more easily understood by a glance at our woodcut than by reading many pages of description. Sprit-sails are sometimes used in boats. These are fore-and-aft sails, which are kept distended by a sprit instead of a yard.
Ally Bazan had sobbed in his excitement over that vision and did not regain the power of articulate speech till the "loot" was safely stowed in the 'tween-decks and Hardenberg had given order to come about. "Now," he had observed dryly, "now, lads, it's Hongkong or bust." The tackle had fouled aloft and the jib hung slatting over the sprit like a collapsed balloon.
"I felt that if I could get that sprit down we were safe; but my wife dared not attempt it, and she would not trust herself at the tiller.
Fortunately the boat steered 'very small, and seizing my opportunity, I set the tiller amidships, darted forward, cleared the end of the sprit from its becket, and got back just in time to meet her as she began to broach to, on the crest of a wave, which nearly half filled us with water.
A is the end the nativs use as the bow, but which on first Sight I took to be the Stern c. d. is a comb cut of the solid wood with the Canoe, and projects from the Center of the end of the Canoe being about 1 inch thick, it's Sides parallel and edge at c, d, Sharp it is from 9 to 11 inches in debth and extends from the under part of the bow sprit at A to the bottom at, d,. the Stern B is nearly rounding and gradually assending. 1, 2, 3, represents the rim of the gunnals about 4 inches wide, reather ascending as they recede from the Canoe. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, are the holes through which the String pass to fasten the round pieces which pass Crosswise the Canoe to Strengthen & lift her.
However, I found two pieces which appeared pretty good, and with these I went to work; and with a great deal of pains, and awkward stitching, you may be sure, for want of needles, I at length made a three-cornered ugly thing, like what we call in England a shoulder-of-mutton sail, to go with a boom at bottom, and a little short sprit at the top, such as usually our ships’ long-boats sail with, and such as I best knew how to manage, as it was such a one as I had to the boat in which I made my escape from Barbary, as related in the first part of my story.
"Sir," said D'Aubigne eagerly, "it is true, then, that the Sprit of God worketh and dwelleth in you still? You sigh unto God because of the absence of your friends and faithful servants; and all the while they are together, sighing because of yours and laboring for your freedom. But you have only tears in your eyes, and they, arms in hand, are fighting your enemies.
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