382 THE seaman's perils. 



the sail is flapping in a manner which will destroy 

 it in a few minutes, for it is sweeping abaft the yard. 

 (N^ow this is the only topsail that can be depended 

 upon in case the ship on arriving at the coast should 

 be jammed on a lee-shore: for then nothing could 

 be saved except by its proper management and use.) 

 Jack knows that under precisely these circumstances 

 hundreds of seamen have been torn from the foot-rope 

 while in the line of their duty, and hurled into the sea, 

 when the fury of the elements precluded the possi- 

 bility of an attempt to save them. Perchance in his 

 last ship such an accident occurred : mayhap his 

 messmate was swept from the same yardarm he him- 

 self was on. But he does not stop to think of all 

 this : he springs into the rigging, climbs to the yard, 

 gets a foothold, and (at every step forced to throw 

 the sail over his head) arrives at the earing, when his 

 task becomes comparatively eas}'. Little by little 

 he gathers up, passing his gasket, and securing the 

 sail, until all is snugly lashed along the yard in such 

 a manner that the wind has no effect upon it. His 

 task now done, he descends to the deck, as if nothing 

 more than the most ordinary occupation had been 

 his; and he is ready and willing to go aloft again, 

 if necessity demands it. 



It is ever thus at sea. The seaman's life, day by 

 day, hour by hour, is exposed to peril, now in one 

 form, now in another: from the heavy sea sweeping 

 the ship, the unruly canvas, the defective spar. The 

 wheel may throw and maim him, a stranded rope 

 precipitate him to the deck; or, in laying out of a 

 tempestuous night upon the jib or flying-jib boom 

 he may miss his footing : he falls into the sea, the 



