hip on her old
tack are loosed. A roar of wind-waves rushes through the sails, and a
tremor runs through the whole ship from stem to stern. The skipper
waits for the first decided breath on her new tack and then shouts,
'Mainsail haul!' when the yards come swinging round so quickly that the
men can hardly take in the slack of the braces fast enough. The scene
of orderly confusion is now at its height. Every one hauling sings out
at the very top of his pipes. The sails are struggling to find their
{116} new set home; while the headsheets forward thrash about like mad
and thump their blocks against the deck with force enough to dash your
brains out.

Mates and boatswain work furiously, for the skipper's eye is searching
everywhere, and the skipper's angry words cut the delinquent like the
lash of a well-aimed whip. The boatswain forward has the worst of it,
for the restive sheets and headsails won't come to trim without a fight
when it's breezing up and seas are running. But presently all the
yards get rightly trimmed, tacks boarded, and bowlines hauled out taut.
She's on a bowline taut enough to please the old man now; that is, the
ropes leading forward from the middle of the forward edge of every
square sail are so straight that she is sailing as near the wind as she
can go and keep a full on. 'Go below, the watch!' and the men off duty
tramp down, the cook and boatswain with their 'oilies' streaming from
their scuffle with the flying spray and slapping dollops at the bows.

When a quartering trade wind is picked up sailing is at its easiest;
for a well-balanced suit of canvas will keep her bowling along night
and day with just the lightest of touches at the wheel. Then is the
time to bend her old sails {117} on; for, unlike a man, a ship puts on
her old suit for fair weather and her new suit for foul. Then, too, is
the time for dog-watch yarning, when pipes are lit without any fear of
their having to be crammed half-smoked into the nearest pocket because
all hands are called. Landsmen generally think that most watches
aboard a wind-jammer are passed in yarns and smoking. But this is far
from being the case. The mates and skipper keep everybody busy with
the hundred-and-one things required to keep a vessel shipshape:
painting, graining, brightening, overhauling the weak spots in the
rigging, working the 'bear' to clean the deck with fine wet sand,
helping whomever is acting as 'Chips' the carpenter, or the