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He thought it was a sea-phrase for splicing a rope, just as he supposed "main-sheet" was the largest sail of a ship. We begin to understand what a long voyage our ship has come when we are told that "starboard" is steer-board, the side to which the steering-paddle was made fast before the modern rudder was invented in the fourteenth century.
Just you glue your eye to that compass, or I'll show you round the vessel at the butt-end of my boot." Or suppose a hand to linger aft, whither he had perhaps been summoned not a minute before. "Mr. Daniells, will you oblige me by stepping clear of that main-sheet?" the captain might begin, with truculent courtesy. "Thank you.
As if to make up for lost time, she seemed to touch only the high places. Under a sudden shock and strain her rigging began to give out. First the main-sheet strap was carried away, and then the peak halyard-block broke from the gaff. It was time to reef and refit, and so when "all hands" came on deck I went about doing that.
After that they sailed off homewards in their new boat. There was no other ballast in the boat but himself, his old woman, the children, and the Christmas provisions. His son Bernt sat by the main-sheet; his wife, helped by her next eldest son, held the sail-ropes; Elias himself sat at the rudder, while the two younger brothers of twelve and fourteen were to take it in turns to bail out.
Between us, however, we succeeded in so far flattening in the main-sheet as to cant her bows to windward, and though the schooner's keel actually stirred up the mud for a distance of quite fifty yards, we at last had the gratification of seeing her draw off the bank.
Thus equipped, she crept out by the back door, and having got thus free, she hurried along, never looking behind her till she came to the main road to Edinburgh, when she mounted the umbrella one used by her father, and so large that it was more like a main-sheet than a covering suitable to so small a personage; so it behoved, that if she met any other "travellers on purpose bent," the moving body must have appeared to be some small tent on its way to a fair, carried by the proprietor thereof, of whom no more could be seen but the two short toddling legs, and the hem of the black riding-hood.
"She's all right now," said Priscilla, "and anyway there are two life buoys on board." Then Peter Walsh did an unexpected thing. He put the tiller down and began to haul in his main-sheet. The boat rounded up into the wind, headed straight northwards for the shore of Inishlean. She listed heavily, lay over till it seemed as if the sail would touch the water.
The moon had not yet risen, and Ruth, gazing into the starry vault of the sky and exchanging no speech with Martin, experienced a sudden feeling of loneliness. She glanced at him. A puff of wind was heeling the boat over till the deck was awash, and he, one hand on tiller and the other on main-sheet, was luffing slightly, at the same time peering ahead to make out the near-lying north shore.
He set the weather-topping- lift up hand-taut, and took a turn with the lee one; then dropped the peak of the mainsail until the end of the gaff was pressing against the lee-lift; triced the tack right up to the throat; then let run the throat-halliards, and hauled down the throat of the sail by the tack tripping-line; whilst I rounded in upon the main-sheet.
Overhead the mainsail, illuminated as high as the yard by the lamps, was bulging forwards under the gale, which was rising every minute, and straining so violently at the main-sheet, that there was some doubt whether it might not be necessary to interrupt the funeral in order to take sail off the ship.
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