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A clear sky; burning, vertical sun; work going lazily on, and men about decks with nothing but duck trousers, checked shirts, and straw hats; the ship moving as lazily through the water; the man at the helm resting against the wheel, with his hat drawn over his eyes; the captain below, taking an afternoon nap; the passenger leaning over the taffrail, watching a dolphin following slowly in our wake; the sailmaker mending an old topsail on the lee side of the quarter-deck; the carpenter working at his bench, in the waist; the boys making sinnet; the spun-yarn winch whizzing round and round, and the men walking slowly fore and aft with the yarns.
I made some slight noise in starting back, and Mr Frewen rose quickly to his elbow to stare in my excited face. "What is it?" he said in a hurried whisper. For answer I held before him a packet of something made up in a piece of canvas, and tied round with spun-yarn.
The sun comes out once more, hotter than ever, dries up the decks and the sailors' clothes; the hatches are taken off; the sail got up and spread on the quarter-deck; spun-yarn winch set a whirling again; rigging coiled up; captain goes below; and every sign of an interruption is removed.
The place was almost like a museum in the variety of its contents; and they were not long in confiscating a dozen fathoms of three-inch rope, the remains of a coil of ratline, a small ball of spun-yarn for seizings, a sledge-hammer, an axe apiece, a marline-spike, a few long spike-nails, which Lance decided would be capital tools for the ladies to use in picking out the nuggets, and a few other trifling matters.
"Arrested!" said Moses, eyeing the sheriff's officer with sovereign contempt; though he was a sturdy fellow, and one who had every disposition to do his duty. "Arrested! Why, Miles, you can handle both these chaps, yourself; and, with Neb's and my assistance, could work 'em up into spun-yarn without a winch!"
In a few minutes Antonino and the other man came to the side, carrying an odd-looking black bundle, sewn up in what Ruggiero felt was oiled canvas as he steadied it down into the stern of the little boat, and neatly hitched round from end to end with spun-yarn, so as to be about the shape of an enormous sausage. The two men lowered it without much caution; it was heavy but rather limp.
Dick Derrick taught me to hand, furl, and steer, to knot and splice, to make sinnet and spun-yarn, and the various other parts of a seaman's business. I was ambitious to learn; and I found the work, when taught by him, both easy and pleasant. I was placed in the second mate's watch, and had to keep my watch regularly. In this I was fortunate. William Bell was his name.
Often would he have to attend to some call of the stevedores, or wheelers, or shovelers now for a piece of spun-yarn now for a handspike now for a hammer, or some nails now for some of the ship's molasses, to sweeten water the which the Captain afterwards reprehended him for giving.
These ``rope-yarns'' are constantly used for various purposes, but the greater part is manufactured into spun-yarn. For this purpose, every vessel is furnished with a ``spun-yarn winch''; which is very simple, consisting of a wheel and spindle.
I think the fellow's head is made of a wood-pack: for my shot rebounded from his face like a wad of spun-yarn from the walls of a ship. But if so be that son of a b of a tree hadn't come athwart my weather-bow, d'ye see, I'll be d d if I hadn't snapt his main-yard in the slings, and mayhap let out his bulge-water into the bargain."
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