A Spliced Yarn; Some Strands from the Life Cable of Bill Bullen (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 Excerpt: ... to follow the leading topman aloft, to hang at the lee-yard-arm over the seething abyss till the earing was passed to windward; you would have thought the growth of the coming storm excited a defiant spirit in old Jakes, with which for the time he matched his stoutest fellows. Away aloft Up the leaning rope-ladders, up into the blast and the wrestling fury of swollen sail and palpable night, again to strive with them, to master them, to help the faithful ship in her gallant fight; while two mates held her convulsive wheel, in order that Anderson the whaler's dauntless foot and sinewy strength might not be wanting at her maintopsail-earing. Thrilling to behold, from above, how the milewide billows of three meeting oceans broke and heaved athwart her, now hissing and torn by the shifting south-easter; in valley and hill alike stupendous, struggling to rise higher, but shorn, discrested, pressed by the upper force upon its way, whose clouds came on like Alps beyond, with seeming snowy-avalanche or palegreen iceberg glimmering on their breasts. Grand to see, too, how, as soon as she was lightened of superfluous sail, she mounted and swam cleaving on; surging, indeed, to her weather-headrail, where an anchor leant black amid the glare of spray; burying her martingale before her in foam, while the hawse-holes spouted inward and gurgled back, the leescupper-holes gushed, and at times a green sea curled from the black-blue element to her very waist, as if to wash all bare from her deck, every timber of her fabric straining and complaining. But still, with yards braced to suit the change, she lay her course; she buffeted it nobly, and yet beat onward. And grandest of all to see, how the silent captain stood and watched, smiling a little as he saw it; and resolutel...