He called the dog and they went forward. There is no good in talking of jiggers, down-hauls, sheets, halliards, winches, and such things to landsmen. Enough, then, if it be said that by first letting go and then by hauling down, Hardy, helped by the dog and the jigger--which is another word for the watch-tackle--succeeded in easing the ship of two or three pinions of staysails and jib. The jigger manned the down-haul stoutly, and the dog stuck like glue to all slack he was asked to concern himself with. The sails were left to flap and slat and thunder. What could Hardy do? If the canvas went to pieces they must carry the ship home without it; if it held, there were the dog, the jigger, and the man to rehoist it. A mate's ear does not love the noise of slatting canvas, and Hardy as he stood in the bows guessed with something of helpless disgust that the jib-boom was buckling a bit. The foretopmast staysail and the inner jib were roaring like a thunder-storm, and a living gale swept out of the iron curve of the bolt-rope of the fore-course. It was white water often to the figure-head, the midnight magnificence and wrath of foam, the stormy bellowing of the recoiling and shattered sea. Heavenly Father! to think of this rushing, shadowy structure, this clipper fabric, whose stern was out of sight in darkness from the bows, controlled by a girl! Hardy ran aft to take the wheel, and the dutiful dog trotted beside him. How did that night pass? In simple alternations of coop and wheel. It was not to be a long night; the business of the half-gale did not begin until eight bells of the first watch, and it was nearly two bells before Hardy had made an end with his staysails and jib. It was not perhaps in those days so extremely necessary as it is in these to keep a bright lookout for ships' lights, simply because the steam vessel was comparatively few, and the sailing ship was not greatly accustomed to interpret her presence by the red and green wink. The flourish of the lamp hastily plucked out of the binnacle was deemed as good a flare as an empty flaming tar-barrel, and, indeed, it sometimes sufficed. Collision in the days of timber was not collision in the days of steel. Colliding ships ground away each other's channels amidst the benedictions of the forecastle and the poop, and the spluttering expostulations of crackling spars on high. Now 'tis touch and sink, so ingenious and preserving is the water-tight bulkhead, so grand in assurance of the salvation of precious life is the keel-up boat, secured beyond all release of knife or tool to the skid. Everything is riveted, and everything goes, and it takes half a dozen gunboats to sink a wooden wreck maliciously floating in the track of the supreme expression of the modern shipwright's art.