The reason for putting the helm a-weather, or to the side next the wind, is to make the ship veer before it when it blows so hard that she cannot bear her side to it any longer. _Veering_, or wearing, is the operation by which a ship, in changing her course from one _board_ to the other, turns her stern to windward; the French term is, _virer vent arriere_. PAGE 68, l. 20. _Timoneer_— The _helmsman_, from the French, _timonnier_. PAGE 69, l. 8. _While the fore stay-sail balances before:_ Called with more propriety the _fore top-mast stay-sail_: it is of a triangular shape, and runs upon the fore top-mast stay, over the bowsprit: it consequently has an influence on the fore-part of the ship, as the mizen has on the hinder part; and, when thus used together, they may be said to balance each other. See also the last note of this Canto. PAGE 69, l. 10. ... _th’ extended tack confin’d._ The main-sail and fore-sail of a ship are furnished with a _tack_ on each side, which is formed of a thick rope tapering to the end, having a knot wrought upon the largest extremity, by which it is firmly retained in the clue of the sail: by this means the tack is always fastened to windward, at the same time that the sheet extends the sail to leeward. PAGE 69, l. 13. ... _the bunt-lines gone!_ _Bunt-lines_ are ropes fastened to the bottoms of the square sails to draw them up to the yards, when the sails are brailed or furled. PAGE 69, l. 19. ... _and yards to starboard braced._ A yard is said to be braced, when it is turned about the mast horizontally, either to the right or left: the ropes employed in this service are called the larboard and starboard braces. PAGE 69, l. 23, 24; and PAGE 70, l. 1, 2. _Brails, head-ropes, robands._ _Brails_: a general name given to all the ropes which are employed to haul up, or brail the bottoms, and lower corners of the great sails. A rope is always attached to the edges of the sails, to strengthen and prevent them from rending: those parts of it which are on the perpendicular or sloping edges, are called _leech ropes_, that, at the bottom, the _foot rope_, and that on the top, or upper edge, the _head-rope. Robands_, or _rope bands_, are small pieces of rope, of a sufficient length to pass two or three times about the yards, in order to fix to them the upper edges of the respective great sails: the robands for this purpose are passed through the eyelet holes under the head-rope. PAGE 70, l. 3-6. _That task performed, they first the braces slack,_ _Then to the chess-tree drag th’ unwilling tack._ _And, while the lee clue-garnet’s lower’d away,_ _Taught aft the sheet they tally, and belay._