184 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 1, 1908. 
STAND BY ROYAL HALLIARDS. 
“Oh! no!” I answered. “There’s plenty more 
in the slop chest.” 
But there was not, and I had to stand in the 
sun with a small cap on after that. 
Where we were now we needed as little cloth¬ 
ing as possible, but oilskins were often in de¬ 
mand. Nearly every day we had rain and some 
days it would pour all day long—rain such as 
I had never seen before. It did not seem to 
come down in drops, but fell in sheets and 
spouted in streams out of all the scuppers. 
It was a curious sight during the day to see 
the showers moving about across the calm 
ocean, and when at the wheel, as there was not 
much steering to do, I used to watch the 
showers coming along with the wind. Each 
one was indicated by a bank of clouds, under¬ 
neath which, like a black veil, hung the water 
that was falling; some trailing one way, some 
another, as the wind blew in different directions. 
I would see a small cloud on the weather 
bow, which in an incredibly short time 
mounted in the heavens until nearly over the 
bark, while under it came what looked like a 
fog bank rushing along straight for us. By the 
time it hit I would have my oil skins on and not 
a thing could I see forward but the cabin in 
front of me, and that was a mass of seething, 
splattering, white spray. Sometimes these 
showers would be accompanied by fierce 
squalls of wind, so every time the rain came 
driving along toward us, the mate, who proved 
a thorough old seadog, was ready for it. 
Running up onto the poop so he could com¬ 
mand a better view, he would sing out, “Stand 
by royal halliards!” One man would run to the 
fore and one to the main and get some of the 
turns off the pins, ready to let the royals come 
down on the run should there be wind enough 
in the squall to require it. How the mate 
could tell when there was wind in a squall and 
when there was not, was more than I could see. 
But he never made a mistake, and when he 
sung out to “Let go!” there was sure to be a 
squall that justified the order. 
Once we had let go royals and topgallant 
staysails and were hoisting the main topgallant 
staysail after the squall had blown over, when 
something jammed aloft. The three of us could 
not start it up an inch more, so the mate ran 
forward and cleared the down haul. “Now, 
hoist away!” he shouted. “Pull! pull!” and was 
working himself into a passion over it. But 
pull our hardest, we could not budge it; so aft 
he came dn a run, took the ladder in two jumps 
and gave a fearful yank on the halliards. “Get 
hold here!” he ordered." So all of us prepared 
for a mighty pull. We gave it, but were some¬ 
what startled by the result, for the seats of three 
pairs of trousers struck the deck with a thump 
that made us think the mast had come over on 
top of us, and the fourth man went sprawling off 
the poop onto the main deck. When the mate 
painfully picked himself up off the deck, he 
never stopped to look aloft, but walked aft and 
muttered “Go up and splice that.” Joe and I 
took the parted rope aloft and spliced it to¬ 
gether up at the crosstrees, where we found the 
other end. 
One night we had a close shave from all 
hands going to the bottom. It was a fierce, 
windy night, so black you could not see half 
the length of the bark. That day we had run 
by the log 240 miles and were still doing the 
same. I was on lookout, and about midnight 
I saw a faint green light dead ahead. 
“Light ahead, sir!” I shouted aft with all my 
might, but got no answer, and started aft, 
shouting to the mate, “Ship ahead, sir! Light 
dead ahead, sir!” 
Before I got to the mainmast there was a 
rushing, roaring sound, and a large full-rigged 
ship swept past us, so close it seemed as if her 
yards would surely lock with ours. I could see 
she had skysails set and see the glimmer of her 
binnacle lamp. It was all over in a second and 
the ship was out of sight astern. - But I tell you 
it made cold chills go over me when I thought 
of what might have happened, and it was a long 
time before I could close my eyes in sleep when 
our watch turned in that night. 
The mate came running forward cursing at 
me when it was all over, and swore I had never 
sung out about the ship. But Joe, whq was at 
the wheel at the time, told me afterward the 
mate was leaning with his elbows on the booby- 
hatch and had not moved for over a half an 
hour. Joe had heard me sing out clear enough, 
so I concluded the mate must have been asleep. 
Several ships passed us next day, but most of 
them were several miles off. One little bark 
c.ame near enough to speak us. It was early 
in the morning, Joe and I were swabbing off 
the -white paint work around the after cabin 
after we had washed off the decks. When the 
bark was a short distance ahead, the mate called 
below to the captain, and he came up on deck. 
“Make our numbers, Mr. H.,” he said to the 
mate. So we knocked off swabbing and got 
out the code signals that made our number and 
I hoisted them up on the signal halliards to the 
mizzen topmast head, while Joe ran the Ameri¬ 
can flag up to the peak. 
On came the other bark, a wooden vessel of 
about our own size and rig, but with a decided 
“blue nose” look, and so she proved-to be—a 
Nova Scotian with the British ensign floating 
away from her gaff end. She had a fair wind 
and her gaff topsail was hauled down on the 
cap, so the string of signal flags could be seen 
by us. 
When both numbers had been made out, al¬ 
though it took a good deal of squinting through 
the glasses by both the captain and mate before 
they could do so, the signals were hauled down, 
the ensigns dipped three times and then left 
flying as the other bark disappeared astern. 
C. G. Davis. 
Morris Y. C. Smoker. 
About two hundred members of the Morris 
Y. C. and their friends congregated at Schoeck’s 
Hall, Third avenue, near 164th street, New York 
city, on the evening of Jan. 25, and had a 
smoker. Each member was presented with a 
wooden pipe and a package of tobacco, with 
which to add his mite to the soft-coal smoke 
atmosphere. Commodore Lubeck opened the 
entertainment with a short speech about 9 
o’clock, and for three hours the jovial yachts¬ 
men were entertained by songs, music, strength 
tests, chain breaking, spike bending and flame 
eating, beside several interesting and touchingly 
pathetic moving picture scenes. 
There were stories, dialects and dances with a 
never ending service of good cheer and refresh¬ 
ments that made the night a most enjoyable one. 
The Origin of Sails. 
“Wind written music,” says G. A. J., and 
I’ll not quarrel with him on the qualification, 
either—only really the wind blows from. too 
many quarters at once. A regular whirlwind— 
bearing aloft in its vortex “sandy-complexioned 
sphinxes of middle age construction (?), Nomad 
tribes, a bah cloth, palms and spices, ‘soaked-up 
tides,’ Pompey, Trajaro and Turks, ridges of 
waterless plain,” and the rest. What a seething 
mass is here to tell the story of sails! What a 
dust he kicks up! Belay all! 
This is not a matter of post-prandial oratory, 
or of “date palms and incense.” . Simply a 
matter' of the records in our possession. 
In my letter of Dec. 14, I gave a rock record, 
pronounced by the most competent authority in 
matters pertaining to ancient Egyptian or 
Semitic culture—de Morgan—to be “pre- 
dynastic.” Perhaps other records may be dis¬ 
covered still more ancient, but so far as I know 
this is the oldest. 
As for papyrus matting sails, these were actu¬ 
ally in use, whether G. A. J. chooses to “take 
much stock in the-syndicate theory” or not. 
Matting sails are still in use, for that matter. 
Yes! Ethnologists are accustomed to con¬ 
sider Egypt ancient, “that vague and discrimi¬ 
nating” term. So ancient that the record on 
the rocks at Chatt-el-Regal discovered and en¬ 
graved by M. G. Legrain, and which is pro¬ 
nounced to be pre-dynastic, may be a millennium 
or two older than Menes himself, and we know 
that he dates back to about 5 > 000 C. 
In referring in my former letter to other 
centers where probably some proofs of the 
earliest use of sails might be discovered, I spoke 
of the Persian Gulf. 
The investigations of Theodore Bert and 
others demonstrated that upon the southern 
shore of those waters the Phoenicians had 
their first seat. They only migrated to the 
Syrian coast at a comparatively late date (3,000 
B. C.). Their graves on the Bahrein Islands 
certainly date back to the Neolitic period. 
The Minaeans, who occupied the coast of the 
Red Sea, and preceded the Sabaeans and 
Hymyarites were probably as ancient as any, 
but though we now have a list of thirty-three 
Mimean kings, we have no positive proofs that 
these peoples ever employed sails. We may 
infer that they did, but inference is not proof. 
As opposed to G. A. J.’s vision (inferred) of 
pre-historic steam yachts gliding oyer the 
bosom of the Nile, I have rather in mind, that 
“ship of the desert,” the camel, its Arab rider s 
white “burnous” a-flutter in the breeze, bearing 
down with wind astern on the port of Mederia, 
one hundred miles inland. Perhaps this is the 
sail for whose origin your correspondent is 
seeking? , 
I must admit, however, that G. A. J. has 
awakened my interest in those very early navi¬ 
gators, “who went round the Eastern Hemi¬ 
sphere before the ‘land of the avenues 01 
sphinxes’ was ever heard of.” So will close 
at once, as I want to brush up on my Akkado- 
Sumerian, and consult a few cylinders of cunea- 
form characters in regards to those pre-historic 
voyagers to whom he refers. 
C. J. Reynolds. 
