Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 23, 2024
Toward morning, the wind having become light, we crossed our royal and skysail yards, and at daylight we were seen under a cloud of sail, having royal and skysails fore and aft. The "spouter," as the sailors call a whaleman, had sent up his main top-gallant mast and set the sail, and made signal for us to heave to.
Now they stripped for the tussle to windward around Cape Horn, sending down studdingsail booms and skysail yards, making all secure with extra lashings, plunging into the incessant head seas of the desolate ocean, fighting it out tack for tack, reefing topsails and shaking them out again, the vigilant commanders going below only to change their clothes, the exhausted seamen stubbornly, heroically handling with frozen, bleeding fingers the icy sheets and canvas.
Behold, he was from my own town, Oakland, California, and he was a member of the celebrated Boo Gang a gang with which I had affiliated at rare intervals. We talked fast and bolted the grub in the half-hour that followed. Then my freight pulled out, and I was on it, bound west on the trail of Skysail Jack.
Some of the officers unfortunately believed that we were to remain, and followed the captain's example, by sending their linen on shore to be washed. Skysail was firm, and so was I; the lieutenant cocked his eye, and said, "Messmate, depend on it there is something in the wind.
Her foremast and bowsprit were immensely strong and heavy, and her mainmast was so long and tapering, that the wonder was, how the few shrouds and stays about it could support it: it was the handsomest stick we had ever seen. Her upper spars were on the same scale, tapering away through topmast, topgallant mast, royal and skysail masts, until they fined away into slender wands.
The braces had been let go, and the yard was swinging about like a turnpike gate, and the whole sail, having blown out to leeward, the lee leach was over the yard-arm, and the skysail was all adrift and flying about my head. I looked down, but it was in vain to attempt to make myself heard, for every one was busy below, and the wind roared, and sails were flapping in all directions.
I thanked him for his kind condescension. He then gave a few directions to Skysail, the first lieutenant, and ordering his gig to be manned, offered me a passage on shore. This was, indeed, a mark of favour never before conferred on any officer in the ship, and all hands spontaneously turned out to see the sight.
As for his feelings on the day on which he can tell for certain the upper fore topsail from the upper fore top-gallant sail, and either of these from the fore skysail, the crossjack, or the mizzen-royal, they are those of a man who has mastered a language and discovers himself, to his surprise, talking it fluently.
You were "blowed-in-the-glass" all right. A week later I, too, got my ship, and on board the steamship Umatilla, in the forecastle, was working my way down the coast to San Francisco. Skysail Jack and Sailor Jack gee! if we'd ever got together. Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle wantonness do tramps carve their monicas, dates, and courses.
The inside was then painted, from the skysail truck to the waterways, the yards, black; mast-heads and tops, white; monkey-rail, black, white, and yellow; bulwarks, green; plank-shear, white; waterways, lead-color, &c., &c. The anchors and ring-bolts, and other iron work, were blackened with coal-tar; and the steward was kept at work, polishing the brass of the wheel, bell, capstan, &c.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking