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I mounted the weather-rigging; five or six hardy seamen followed me; sailors will rarely refuse to follow where they find an officer lead the way. The jerks of the rigging had nearly thrown us overboard, or jammed us with the wreck.
By hand-lights, blue and green, they saw, high up in the air, the unfortunate crew lashed in the weather-rigging, i. e. on the port or left side of the wreck, the side opposite to that under shelter of which they lay. The shelter was a poor one, for great seas broke over the wreck and into the lifeboat on the other side.
These things are scarcely bundled up and lifted out of the way before the long-expected order to reef topsails is smartly given out, and crowds of men are seen skipping up the tight weather-rigging, with a merry kind of alacrity, which always makes a captain feel grateful to the fellows I do not well know why; for, as there is then no real danger, there seems nothing particularly praiseworthy in this common-place exertion.
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