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Updated: May 11, 2025
"Lay aft to the main-brace." The men on watch hesitated a moment and then came crowding aft and began to cast off the weather-brace from its belaying-pin.
The young girl had, meantime, made the lee fore-brace fast, and had then gone over to windward and cast off the running part of the weather-brace, which she threw overboard. I now hailed again, telling her what we were about to do, and then signed to Bob to put the helm up.
But it was necessary to have the crew ready to work together, for the seaman who had hauled on the weather-brace in tacking was now an officer, and the stations of many were new and strange to them. Shuffles in the ship, and Terrill in the consort, proceeded to execute all the manoeuvres required in handling the vessel, from getting under way to coming to anchor again.
Accordingly, the clew-lines, down-haul-tackle, and weather-brace being manned, the halliards were let go, the weather-brace hauled in, the weather-sheet started and clewed up; then the bowline and lee-sheets being let go, the sail caught aback, and the men springing on the yard, grasped it in their arms as they hung over it.
Freedom from anxiety, however, is a matter of temperament; not by any means necessarily of courage, although it adds to courage the invaluable quality of not wasting nerve force on difficulties of the imagination. A weather-brace may go unexpectedly; a topsail-sheet part; an awkward wave come on board. Very true; but what is the use of worrying, unless you are constitutionally disposed to worry.
Our men were in such a consternation, that not a man on board the ship had presence of mind to apply to the proper duty of a sailor, except friend William; and had he not run very nimbly, and with a composure that I am sure I was not master of, to let go the fore-sheet, set in the weather-brace of the fore-yard, and haul down the top-sails, we had certainly brought all our masts by the board, and perhaps have been overwhelmed in the sea.
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