“Ben! Ben! look here!”
“Well, I’m looking straight at you.”
“You know we are going to be desperately put to it to raise money enough to buy sails and rigging, and are pinching all we dare to on the hull and fastening on that account.”
“Yes.”
“You know how they make booms in a river to hold logs; they take long sticks, and fasten them together with iron, and sometimes with withes and ropes, and they hold acres of logs against the whole force of the freshet; and don’t you know what a master-strain spruce poles, not more than six inches through, will bear—how they will buckle before they’ll break?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, what’s the reason we couldn’t make wooden shrouds by bolting some tough spars to the mast-head and wales, and save shrouds and chain-plates, which would be a tremendous saving.”
“There wouldn’t be any give to them: when the mast sprung, it would bring all the strain on the poles, and carry them away.”
“But,” asked Henry, “why couldn’t you put a dead-eye to the lower end, set it up with a lanyard, just like any rigging? Then there would be spring enough; or, if you didn’t like to bolt to the masthead, put rope at both ends: you would then save a good deal. I’m sure there would be no danger of losing the spars by the stretching of the rigging.”
“They would be strong to bear an up-and-down strain, as strong as rope, but would be liable to be broken by anything striking them, when set up taut: suppose the boom should happen to strike them, or the yards, anchor-stock, or jib-boom of another vessel hauling by in the dock? They wouldn’t stand anything of that kind, like rigging.”