The Steel Horse: The Rambles of a Bicycle

by Harry Castlemon

When Roy had a chance to look about him, as he did as often as the lightning flashed over the deck, he saw that a good many things had been done during the few minutes that had elapsed since he boarded the vessel. Besides the sailors who were busy with the head-sails, a second party of men, under another officer, had been equally active on the quarter-deck; another huge sail had been given to the breeze, and a man sent to the wheel. The vessel was gathering rapid headway, and, what seemed strange to Roy, she was not rounding to in order to go up the harbor, because the lights which pointed out the position of the piers in the lower end of the city were still on the left hand, and one by one they danced away out of sight over the port quarter. The ship was holding straight for the entrance to the bay, through which she would soon pass to the open sea.

"By gracious! We shall be in a pretty fix if we don't get off immediately," soliloquized Roy, holding fast to the rail and looking in vain for Tony and Bob. "What can those men be thinking of? If they delay much longer I shall cast off in that boat and do the best I can by myself."

"Lay aloft and loose to'gallantsails," shouted a voice, almost in Roy's ear. "Up you go, ye young sea-monkey!"

"I don't belong here," replied Roy, turning about and finding himself face to face with one of the mates, who emphasized his order by waving his arm toward the topsail yard. "But I'll do the best I can if you think you can trust me. How long before you are going to run into the harbor?"

If the mate heard and understood the question he did not take the trouble to reply to it. He simply shouted, "Lay aloft and be quick about it!" and then backed up against the rail so that he could watch the movements of the men who had already responded to the command to loose topgallant-sails.

"I know I'll not be of the least use up there," said Roy, as he scrambled up the ratlines, "but I'll have something to talk about when I get ashore."

Roy worked his way upward until his progress was stopped by something that frightened him. It was the futtock-shrouds, the terror of every greenhorn. Above his head was a sort of platform, with an opening through it large enough to admit of the passage of an ordinary sized man, and over the edge of it ran a rope ladder to a second series of shrouds leading to a similar platform still higher up. That was the way Roy described the situation to himself, and it is the only way I can describe it, for an Expert Columbia is not supposed to know any thing about ships.

"Great Scott!" panted Roy; "do the sailors, every time they go aloft, have to creep around the outer edge of that platform, and hang with their backs downward, like flies on a ceiling? or do they go through that opening close to the mast? I wonder if that isn't the 'lubber's hole' I have so often read of? I don't care what it is; I'll stay here. But why don't the ship come about and go toward the harbor, if she's going to? I wonder if that light off there, which blazes up so brightly every minute or two and then disappears, isn't on the light-ship. If it is, this ship's going to sea, and we'll go with her if we don't get off directly."

While the boy was talking to himself in this way he did not permit anything that transpired within the range of his vision to escape his notice. He might never again have opportunity to see sail made aboard ship, and now was the time for him to learn something. He heard an almost constant scurrying of feet below, mingled with a chorus of unintelligible commands, some of which were addressed to the dozen or more men who were clinging to a swaying yard over his head, and finally an answering "Ay, ay, sir," came out of the darkness and the men began to "lay down from aloft." Before Roy knew what they meant to do, they were crowding past him on their way to the deck. The last to go by him was Tony.