Net Overboard 



itself, will it?' And Jan returned to where Finch was waiting. 



The warp was still shuddering at full speed through the gallows 

 and charging forwards along the scuppers, and it kept on coming 

 for another five minutes. Jan would have been quite as usefully 

 employed watching the winch shift to and fro on the series of cogs 

 which ensured that the incoming wire was spread evenly over the 

 drums and not built up into an unstable pile in the centre. In- 

 stead he had to content himself with trying to count the two inch 

 markers of twine that were wound about the warp at intervals of 

 twenty fathoms. He missed most of them. He had counted only 

 three when the big bandaged white knot appeared to tell them 

 that they had no more than twenty fathoms to haul. 'Here they 

 come,' yelled Finch, an elephant's trumpeting athwart the wind. 

 Immediately the throb of the winch faltered down to a cumber- 

 some panting. There was a crash of iron on iron and the after 

 board was jammed in the sheave of its gallows. Finch went over 

 and, with Jan's help, secured it there by its stopper so that the 

 strain of its weight was taken off the warp. Then the winch started 

 again but this time it was only the starboard drum that moved. It 

 had soon dragged the forward board home to its gallows where 

 two other members of the crew secured it. 



It was then that the quarter-ropes came into their own. Jan 

 and Finch unshackled theirs from its door and then reshackled it 

 to the bridle of the messenger which was still mounted in sheaves 

 along the upper edge of the engine-room casing. Meantime the 

 people at the forward gallows had fastened their quarter-rope to 

 the towering gilson. The men at the winch then made use of 

 those jutting little drums at either side of the winch to strain in 

 both these auxiliary warps with their cargo of quarter-rope. The 

 massive foot-rope began to appear between the successive waves, 

 and Jan leant over the side to watch both it and the head-rope that 

 was hanging its dozen aluminium heads in the background on the 

 surface. At last the foot-rope, now clear of the sea, was worked 

 up on the outside of the bulwarks over the rail and allowed to flop 

 on the deck. While all this had been going on, Finch had been 



39 



