XXIII.—KNOTS, HITCHES AND SPLICES.
WHEN I was a boy (which was not so very long ago), it was my fortune, one time, to make a trip from Bristol, Rhode Island, to New York, as a sort of working passenger in the sloop Resolution, Captain Israel Northup. One morning the captain called out to me from the wheel to bring aft a bucket of water, at the same time pointing to a wooden pail that stood on the deck near me. I therefore made fast (as I thought) to the handle of the pail the end of the peak halliards and dropped it over the side. It filled readily enough, and I was carelessly pulling it up again, when suddenly, to my great chagrin, the knot that I had made untied itself, and away went the pail drifting rapidly astern.
Captain Israel, although he had witnessed the whole of this performance, said nothing at the time. But a little later, chancing to walk past where I was sitting, he picked up the end of a rope, and, running it through a ringbolt near by, showed me the knot which you see in [Fig. 1].
FIG. 1.—ANCHOR-BEND.
“The next time you throw a bucket overboard,” said he, “you’d better make it fast with an Anchor-bend.” Then in the kindness of his heart he sat down on the rail beside me and gave me a practical lesson (afterwards several times renewed) in the matter of rope-tying.
“There is some things about ropes that a boy must know to be wuth anything at all,” observed he. “An’ there mought be times when a man would give all Cuby ter know how ter tie two ropes together so’t they’d stay.”