“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the captain of the top, looking over the rail instantly and leaving off the work of fitting the upper standing rigging, on which he and his men were engaged when this vigorous hail reached the top, thundered out with all the power of the commander’s lungs. “Want me down, sir?”
“Down? No, my man; but lower a whip at once for the sail burton, and you can lower the tops’l tye as well. I’m going to send up the yard at once!”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
Promptitude begets like promptness.
Before you could say “Jack Robinson,” the whip was down and the purchase in the top; then, the standing part of the tackle was made fast to the yard pendant and the spar swayed up, as the men walked away with the fall, which was rove through a snatchblock hooked on to a ringbolt fixed in the deck and led to the capstan.
Ere a quarter-of-an-hour had elapsed, the yard was slung and firmly secured, with the halliards and braces rigged in proper fashion.
In the middle of the operation, however, the attention of the hard-worked commander was called in another direction.
A fat, heavy, seafaring-looking man in a short pilot jacket came up to him as he was uttering rapid commands to the sailors aloft in stentorian accents from the poop-rail.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said this gentleman, whom I presently learnt was Mr Quadrant, the master, or navigating officer of the ship; one who used in the old days to have charge of all the material on board a man-of-war, just as the commander looks after the crew. “None of those stores, sir, have come off from the dockyard that were promised this morning, and all my hands are idle below. What am I to do, sir?”
“Send a boat at once to the storekeeper, to lodge a complaint.”