FIG. 26.—TO FASTEN A LINE TO A FISHHOOK.
A Blackwall hitch is merely a loop thrown about a hook, as in [Fig. 27], in such a way that the main part of the rope, c, being pulled downward, the part a jams the part b against the hook so firmly that while the strain is kept up the knot cannot possibly slip. Sailors use this hitch very frequently, but it can be used on land as well as at sea. If you have retreated, in a game of “Chase,” to the topmost branch of the oak-tree on the lawn, and have a rope in your hand just long enough to reach the ground and no longer, just make, in a single instant of time, a Blackwall hitch in the crotch of the limb, and, if you dare trust yourself to it, it will take you to the ground in perfect safety, long before your pursuer can climb down again by the way he came up; and you can carry off your rope with you.
FIG. 27.—BLACKWALL HITCH.
Or possibly you might be “up a tree” in a different way. Old Tibbetts, your father’s gardener, not daring to trust himself away from mother earth, has sent you up into the elm tree to saw off for him the limb that is growing too near the house. But that limb must not be allowed to come crashing down; and so, with the rope you have taken up with you, you cast about it, while you saw, a Timber hitch, shown in [Fig. 28].
FIG. 28—TIMBER HITCH.