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Updated: May 15, 2025
Well, you won't make land or anything else in a thousand years once you get all your top-hamper piled down on deck." I have forgotten to state that this occurred at midday yesterday. "What are you goin' to do if we trim?" Charles Davis broke in. "Run off shore," I replied, "and get your gang out in deep sea where it will be starved back to duty."
In spite of breadth of beam, and heavy top-hamper, she possessed speed and ease of control, and must have been a pretty sight, as we bowled along through that deserted sea. Before my watch was up I could see Gunsaules through the skylight busily preparing the table in the cabin below. It was still daylight, but with a purple gleam across the waters, when LeVere arrived on deck for my relief.
Hiram endeavored to open the hack-door as the animals started but who ever yet opened a hack-door in a hurry? Cap'n Aaron Sproul's first impulse was the impulse of the sailor who beholds dangerous top-hamper dragging at a craft's side in a squall.
Of course Jean Thompson did not believe what he said; but he said it, and, in his vexation, repeated it, on the banquettes and at the clubs; and presently it took the shape of a sly rumor, that the returned rover was a trifle snarled in his top-hamper.
The Port Kingston, of the now defunct Imperial Direct West India Mail Line, was really a champion pitcher, for she had an immense beam for her length, and a great amount of top-hamper in the way of deck-houses.
At length a lucky shot from the Aurora struck the schooner's fore-mast just below the eyes of the rigging, wounding the spar so badly that it almost immediately afterwards went, carrying away the main-topmast with it, and in an instant the whole of the pirate's top-hamper was towing to leeward, causing tremendous confusion on board, and placing the craft almost completely at the mercy of her antagonist.
The moment he let go of her he had to grip a loop of top-hamper and hold on with all his might to save himself from being pitched into the water by a fresh jerk of the mast and a fresh inundation of flying surge. When he could look at her again she was far out on the hawser, rising and falling in quick, violent, perilous swings, caught at by the toppling breakers and howled at by the undertow.
He would sail along till he was right in the most exciting part of a yarn, and then say, "Well, as I was saying, the rudder was fouled, ship driving before the gale, head-on, straight for the iceberg, all hands holding their breath, turned to stone, top-hamper giving 'way, sails blown to ribbons, first one stick going, then another, boom! smash! crash! duck your head and stand from under! when up comes Johnny Rogers, capstan-bar in hand, eyes a-blazing, hair a-flying... no, 'twa'n't Johnny Rogers... lemme see ... seems to me Johnny Rogers wa'n't along that voyage; he was along one voyage, I know that mighty well, but somehow it seems to me that he signed the articles for this voyage, but but whether he come along or not, or got left, or something happened "
He and the other passengers could lend a hand in the former, but not in the latter, which required more skilled labour. The reason for bringing down all needless top-hamper, and leaving up a little sail, was to keep the vessel from driving on to the great quicksands off the African coast, to which they would certainly have been carried if the wind held.
Full-rigged forward, with fore-and-aft mainsail, abaft; a gaff-top-sail; taut in his spars, with light top-hamper; neat in his gear, as any beauty Carries a ring-tail in light weather; main-boom like a frigate's top-sail-yard, with a main-top-mast-stay-sail as big as a jib.
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