Man Overboard!Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Science
Man Overboard!
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Ghost stories; Sailors -- Fiction; Seafaring life -- Fiction
Well, those two Benton boys turned up on board the _Helen B.
Jackson_. They had been on half a dozen ships since the _Boston
Belle_, and they had grown up and were good seamen. They had
reddish beards and bright blue eyes and freckled faces; and they
were quiet fellows, good workmen on rigging, pretty willing, and
both good men at the wheel. They managed to be in the same
watch--it was the port watch on the _Helen B._, and that was
mine, and I had great confidence in them both. If there was any
job aloft that needed two hands, they were always the first to
jump into the rigging; but that doesn't often happen on a
fore-and-aft schooner. If it breezed up, and the jibtopsail was
to be taken in, they never minded a wetting, and they would be
out at the bowsprit end before there was a hand at the downhaul.
The men liked them for that, and because they didn't blow about
what they could do. I remember one day in a reefing job, the
downhaul parted and came down on deck from the peak of the
spanker. When the weather moderated, and we shook the reefs out,
the downhaul was forgotten until we happened to think we might
soon need it again. There was some sea on, and the boom was off
and the gaff was slamming. One of those Benton boys was at the
wheel, and before I knew what he was doing, the other was out on
the gaff with the end of the new downhaul, trying to reeve it
through its block. The one who was steering watched him, and got
as white as cheese. The other one was swinging about on the gaff
end, and every time she rolled to leeward he brought up with a
jerk that would have sent anything but a monkey flying into
space. But he didn't leave it until he had rove the new rope, and
he got back all right. I think it was Jack at the wheel; the one
that seemed more cheerful, the one that whistled "Nancy Lee." He
had rather have been doing the job himself than watch his brother
do it, and he had a scared look; but he kept her as steady as he
could in the swell, and he drew a long breath when Jim had worked
his way back to the peak-halliard block, and had something to
hold on to. I think it was Jim.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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