One evening in the Gulf Stream just at dark the top-gallant sail
was blowing adrift from the “gaskets,” (the ropes with which it was
furled;) and the whole sail was likely to get loose. The captain said
that it must be secured. The mate doubted if it was safe to send men
aloft in such a gale. The captain replied that he had been obliged
when he was before the mast to go aloft in worse weather. He could not
spare the sail. The mate gave the order: “Go aloft, some of you, and
make fast that top-gallant sail.” Six or eight men sprang into the
rigging and soon the sail was furled.
The captain’s eye is necessarily the most of the time all over the
ship. We were sitting on deck when the ship was laboring in a cross
sea. He noticed that the main topmast stays quivered. The stays had
within a few days all been “set up” for Cape weather, but these were
not so taut as they should be. It was only a wakeful eye which would
have noticed it. The remedy was applied at once. It is interesting
to me as a father to hear the young captain spoken of by the sailors
to each other as “the old man.” Had he a wife, though she were only
eighteen years of age she would nevertheless be called “the old woman.”
This made it less offensive to hear myself, though decidedly far from
seventy, spoken of as “the old gentleman.”