Rollo on the Atlantic

by Jacob Abbott

"I have a great mind to go and ask the helmsman what it means," he added, after a moment's pause.

"No," said Jane, "you must not go."

It is difficult to say precisely why Jane did not wish to have Rollo go and ask the helmsman about the bell, but she had an instinctive feeling that it was better not to do it. So Rollo sat still. His attention was very soon turned away from the bell by Jane's calling out to him to see some sailors go up the rigging. There were regular shrouds, as they are called, that is, ladders formed of ropes, which led up on each side of the masts part way to where the sailors seemed to wish to go. Above the top of the shrouds there were only single ropes, and Rollo wondered what the sailors would do when they came to these. They found no difficulty, however, for when they reached the top of the shrouds they continued to mount by the ropes with very little apparent effort. They would take hold of two of the ropes that were a little distance apart with their hands, and then, curling their legs round them in a peculiar manner below, they would mount up very easily. They thus reached the yard, as it is called, which is a long, round beam, extending along the upper edge of the sail, and, spreading themselves out upon it in a row, they proceeded to do the work required upon the sail, leaning over upon the yard above, and standing upon a rope, which was stretched for the purpose along the whole length of it below.

"I wonder if I could climb up there," said Rollo. "Do you suppose they would let me try?"

"No, indeed!" said Jane, very earnestly; "you must not try, by any means."

"I believe that I could climb up there," said Rollo; "that is, if the vessel would stop rocking to and fro, and hold still."

Presently, however, a boy, who appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen years of age, and who was upon another mast, accomplished a feat which even Rollo himself admitted that he should not dare to undertake. It seemed that he had some operation to perform upon a part of the rigging down some fifteen feet from where he was; so, with a rope hung over his shoulder, he came down hand over hand, by a single rope or cable called a stay, until he reached the place where the work was to be performed. Here he stopped, and, clinging to the rope that he had come down upon with his legs and one hand, he contrived with the other hand to fasten one end of the short rope which he had brought with him to the stay, and then, carrying the other end across, he fastened it to another cable which was near. He then seated himself upon this cross rope as upon a seat, and clinging to his place by his legs, he had his hands free for his work. When he had finished his work he untied the cross rope, and then went up the cable hand over hand a he had come down.

"I am sure I could not do that," said Rollo. "And I should not think that any body but a monkey could do it, or a spider."

In fact, the lines of rigging, as seen from the place where Rollo and Jane were seated, looked so fine, and the men appeared so small, that the whole spectacle naturally reminded one of a gigantic spider's web, with black spiders of curious forms ascending and descending upon them, so easily and adroitly did the men pass to and fro and up and down, attaching new lines to new points, and then running off with them, as a spider would do with her thread, wherever they were required. But after all, in respect to the power of running about among lines and rigging, the spider is superior to man. She can not only run up and down far more easily and readily wherever she wishes to go, but she can make new attachments with a touch, and make them strong enough to bear her own weight and all other strains that come upon them; while the sailor, as Rollo and Jane observed on this occasion, was obliged in his fastenings to wind his ropes round and round, and tie them into complicated knots, and then secure the ends with "spun yarn."