Then, "All hands make sail!" he sang out cheerily, dropping naturally into the position of leader.
"Jim, you're an active nipper and quicker than the rest of us; jump up an' cast the gaskets off the main-topsails."
"Aye, aye, sir," returned the boy, with a twinkle in his eye and an emphasis on the "sir."
But Jack never noticed it. He was too busily employed trying to make Lobu understand that he had to get off his haunches and add his weight and muscle as they mustered at the lower-topsail sheets.
"Warble out one o' them chanties o' yours, Jack," called the cowboy. "They helps a man to brace back on a rope a whole lot."
Thereupon Jack struck up an old sea legend about a drowned sailor, who married a mermaid and had an unpleasant habit of climbing up ships' cables and frightening their crews.
Taking the upper-topsail halliards to a small capstan aft, they tramped round strongly to the weird sailor song, in the wild chorus of which even Tari joined:
"And it's blow, ye winds, heigh-ho!
Blow, ye winds, heigh-ho!
Blow away the mist and snow!
And it's blow, ye winds, heigh-ho!"
Before dark the Ocmulgee was plunging heavily along under two lower-topsails, main upper-topsail, reefed foresail and staysails, close hauled on the port tack.