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Then the spar was further secured by shrouds, stays, and backstays; thus providing a very respectable substitute for a mainmast.
I have just come down from the topgallant yard, where for the last three hours I have been clinging uncomfortably to the backstays, watching for land, and swinging back and forth through the fog in the arc of a great circle as the vessel rolled lazily to the seas. We cannot discern any object at a distance of three ships' lengths, although the sky is evidently cloudless.
When these are ready, let forestays be attached and left lying slack in front; let the backstays be carried over the shoulders of the machine to some distance, and, if there is nothing to which they can be fastened, sloping piles should be driven, the ground rammed down all round to fix them firmly, and the ropes made fast to them.
Mate knocks off work and clears up decks earlier than usual, and orders a man who has been employed aloft to send the royal halyards over to windward, as he comes down. Breast backstays hauled taught, and tackle got upon the martingale back-rope. One of the boys furls the mizen royal. Cook thinks there is going to be "nasty work," and has supper ready early.
Travellers are slight iron rings, encircling the backstays, and are used for hoisting the top-gallant yards, and confining them to the backstays. Rolling-tackle is a number of pulleys, engaged to confine the yard to the weather side of the mast; this tackle is much used in a rough sea. Booms are masts or yards, lying on board in reserve. The Courses are the mainsail, foresail, and the mizen.
When the breeze freshens so much as to lift the weight higher than the natives like, one, and sometimes two of them, walk out on the horizontal spars, so as to add their weight to that of the out-rigger. In order to enable them to accomplish this purpose in safety, a "man rope," about breast high, extends over each of the spars from the mast to the backstays.
"Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand! Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore. The boats! stand by!" Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from his perch.
Once more the Lily fired, but what was the astonishment of the British seamen to see her haul her main-tack aboard and begin to make all sail, putting her head to the northward. To follow was impossible, as the Lily had every brace and bowline, all her after backstays, several of her lower shrouds, and other parts of her rigging, shot away.
"Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand! Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore. The boats! stand by!" Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from his perch.
Gibson was in charge: "On deck, sir!" he sang out, with such eagerness that the watch came instantly to attention. "Well, sir?" cried Ben. "Ah-h blows! Again, sir!" "Pass the word for Cap'n Rogers, Webb," the second mate said to me, and grabbing his glasses he started up the backstays to see the sight.
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