It was quite a different thing from furling a royal in a light breeze. When
I had got to the topgallant masthead, the yard was well down by the lifts
and steadied by the braces, but the clews were not hauled chock up to the
blocks. Leaning out precariously, I won Mr. Thomas's attention with
greatest difficulty, and shrieked to have it done. This he did. Then,
casting the yard-arm gaskets off from the tye and laying them across
between the tye and the mast, I stretched out on the weather yard-arm and,
getting hold of the weather leech, brought it in to the slings taut along
the yard. Mind you, all this time I, only a boy, was working in a gale of
wind and driven rain, and was clinging to a yard that was sweeping from
side to side in lurching, unsteady flight far above the deck and the angry
sea. Hauling the sail through the clew, and letting it fall in the bunt, I
drew the weather clew a little abaft the yard, and held it with my knee
while I brought in the lee leech in, the same manner. Then, making up my
bunt and putting into it the slack of the clews, the leech and footrope and
the body of the sail, I hauled it well up on the yard, smoothed the skin,
brought it down abaft, and made fast the bunt-gasket round the mast.
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