Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
Mick and I scrambled up, almost out of breath, into the mizzen-top; which we hardly reached before we heard the commodore give the next order necessary to enable us to take in the reef "Weather tops'l braces, round in! Lower the tops'ls!" Next followed our own especial order "Trice up and lay out!"
But presently I noticed he found it not inconsistent with his dignity to alight on the rigging under friendly cover of the tops'l, where I saw his feathers rudely ruffled by the wind, till darkness set in. If the sailors did not disturb him during the night, he certainly needed all his fortitude in the morning to put a cheerful face on his situation.
"Pipe watch to set starboard topmast and to'gallant stu'ns'ls!" "Ay, ay, sir," replied the boatswain's mate from his post by the after-hatchway; and, almost in the same breath, his piercing shrill whistle was heard, followed by his hoarse shout repeating Mr Bitpin's gruff command. "Watch set starboard topmast and to'gallant stu'ns'ls!" "Topmen aloft!" "Jiggers at the tops'l lifts!"
Seems she'd been over to the Cattle Show at Ostable one year, and she was loaded to the gunwale with some more or less facts that a fortune-tellin' specimen by the name of the 'Marvelous Oriental Seer' had handed her in exchange for a quarter. "'Yup, says she, bobbin' her head so emphatic that the sky-blue ribbon pennants on her black hair flapped like a loose tops'l in a gale of wind.
"In the crosstrees," whispered Hardenberg. "Ah, look there." He was right. Something was stirring there, something that I had mistaken for the furled tops'l. At first it was but a formless bundle, but as Hardenberg spoke it stretched itself, it grew upright, it assumed an erect attitude, it took the outlines of a human being.
No, my man; but lower a whip at once for the sail burton, and you can lower the tops'l tye as well. I'm going to send up the yard at once!" "Ay, ay, sir." Promptitude begets like promptness.
The main tops'l was set, and when the squall struck, the rotten old topmast went by the board 'Kerrash-o! 'Course splinters flew like all possessed, and one of 'em, about a foot long, sailed past Nat's head, where he stood heavin' his whole weight on the wheel, and lit right on the binnacle, smashin' it to matches.
"Skipper Billy," he said, breaking off the narrative and fixing the impassive skipper of the Greased Lightning with an anxious eye, "did they have the smallpox at Tops'l Cove? Come now; did they?" "Ay, sir," Skipper Billy replied; "they had the smallpox at Tops'l Cove." "Dear man!" Docks repeated, "they had the smallpox at Tops'l Cove!
Job turned with a wild laugh to Tommy: "Here, boy, go aloft and reef tops'l; d'ye hear?" Tommy hesitated. "If you don't," said Job, hissing out the words in the extremity of his passion, and stopping abruptly, as if unable to give utterance to his feelings. "Well, what if I don't?" asked the boy sternly. "Why, then ha! ha! ha! why, I'll do it myself."
But in the morning there were the jib and tops'l set and drawing as before. After this we began experimenting on Ally Bazan. We bunked him forward and we bunked him aft, for some one had pointed out that the "ha'nt" walked only at the times when the colonial slept in the fo'c's'le. We found this to be true.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking