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One of the topmen then came up, and perceiving my condition, hailed the deck, and said he believed I was dying, for I could not move, and that he dared not leave me for fear I should fall. O'Brien, who had been on deck all the while, jumped up the rigging, and was soon at the cross-trees where I was.
"Watch, make sail!" then shouted the commander, rubbing his hands with much satisfaction. "Topmen, aloft and loose the topsails! Let go your topsail halliards! Man the head sheets!"
During this time the boarders were exposed to a destructive fire from the main and mizzen-tops, which continued till the main-top was gallantly stormed by a midshipman, William Smith, and five topmen.
But the remembrance of those fair days at sea fills my soul with longing. The weather was mild and bright for the season, and morning upon morning two stout topmen would carry me out to a sheltered spot on the deck, always chosen by my lady herself. There I sat by the hour, swathed in many layers of wool, and tended by her hands alone. Every nook and cranny of our lives were revealed to the other.
In an instant, up started the topmen in pursuit, as it seemed, of the middies in a sort of `follow my leader' chase; and ere the vibration of the commander's voice had ceased to tremble in the air, the active fellows were spread out along the footropes of the yards, loosing the lanyards of the gaskets and casting them off, while the deck-men let go the buntlines and clewlines and other running gear.
The long coils of rope were thrown upon the deck and seized by the groups of seamen detailed for the purpose; while the rigging shook under the quick steps of the alert topmen springing up the ratlines, swarming over the tops, and laying out on the yards, without a thought of the giddy elevation, in their intense rivalry each to be first. "The main royal also, Mr. Seymour," continued the captain.
There's too much of the schoolboy in me. All of which is neither here nor there. What we've got to do is actually and literally to clear that raffle. If you'll come with me in the boat, we'll get to work and straighten things out." "'When the topmen clear the raffle with their clasp-knives in their teeth," she quoted at me; and for the rest of the afternoon we made merry over our labour.
The frigate was standing to the eastward, some three or four leagues from the coast, when one of the topmen, Pat Brady, on the look-out at the mast-head, discovered a sail in shore to the northward. Pat was a relation of my mother she was an Irishwoman, and, as Pat never failed to assert, a credit to her country.
"Roll it up; and send the fellow down who has been so bold as to own any authority but my own in this ship, though it were that of a hurricane." A dozen nimble topmen ascended to the assistance of Fid. In another minute, the unruly canvas was secured, and Richard himself was on his way to the poop.
In a fortnight, he had learned the names and uses of what had, at first, seemed to him the innumerable ropes; and long before that, had accompanied one of the midshipmen aloft. On the first occasion that he did so, two of the topmen followed him, with the intention of carrying out the usual custom of lashing him to the ratlines, until he paid his footing.
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