How Firm a Foundation Read Online Free PDF

that now. At the moment, Destiny ’s forecourse was double-reefed, shortening itsnormal hoist of thirty-six feet to only twenty-four. Unlike a trapezoidal topsail, the course was truly square, equally wide at both head and foot, which meant its sixty-two-foot width was unaffected by the decrease in height. Its effective sail area had thus been reduced from over twenty-two hundred square feet to just under fifteen hundred, but the fifty-five-plus-mile-per-hour wind was stillexerting over seventeen hundred tons of pressure on that straining piece of canvas. The slightest accident could turn all that energy loose to wreak havoc on the ship’s rigging, with potentially deadly consequences under the current weather conditions.
    “Brace up the forecourse!”
    “Weather brace, haul! Tend the lee braces!”
    The ship’s course had been adjusted to bring the wind on to her larboardquarter. Now the foreyard swung as the larboard brace, leading aft to its sheave on the maintop and from there to deck level, hauled that end—the weather end—of the yard aft. The force of the wind itself helped the maneuver, pushing the starboard end of the yard around to leeward, and as the yard swung, the sail shifted from perpendicular to the wind’s direction to almost parallel. The shroudssupporting the mast got in the way and prevented the yard from being trimmed as close to fore-and-aft as Destiny might have wished—that was the main reason no squarerigger could come as close to the wind as a schooner could—but it still eased the pressure on the forecourse immensely.
    “Clew up! Spilling lines, haul!”
    The clewlines ran from the lower corners of the course to the ends of the yards,then through blocks near the yard’s center and down to deck level, while the buntlines ran from the yard to the foot of the sail. As the men on deck hauled away, the clewlines and buntlines raised the sail, aided by the spilling lines—special lines which had been rigged for precisely this heavy-weather necessity. They were simply ropes which had been run down from the yard then looped up aroundthe sail, almost like another set of buntlines, and their function was exactly what their name implied: when they were hauled up, the lower edge of the sail was gathered in a bight, spilling wind out of the canvas so it could be drawn up to the yard without quite so much of a struggle.
    “Ease halliards!”
    The topmen in the foretop waited until the canvas had been fully gathered in and the yardhad been trimmed back to its original squared position before they were allowed out onto it. Squaring the yard once more made it far easier—and safer—for them to transfer from the top to the spar. Under calmer conditions, many of those men would have scampered cheerfully out along the yard itself with blithe confidence in their sense of balance. Under these conditions, use of the foot rope riggedunder the yard was mandatory.
    They spread themselves along the seventy-five-foot-long spar, seventy feet above the reeling, plunging deck—almost ninety feet above the white, seething fury of the water in those fleeting moments when the deck was actually level—and began fisting the canvas into final submission while wind and rain shrieked around them.
    One by one the gaskets went around the gatheredsail and its yard, securing it firmly, and then it was the main topsail’s turn.
    *   *   *
    “Keep her as close to northeast-by-east as you can, Waigan!” Sir Dunkyn Yairley shouted in his senior helmsman’s ear.
    Waigan, a grizzled veteran if ever there was one, looked up at the storm staysails—the triangular, triple-thickness staysails set between the mizzen and the main and between the main andthe fore—which, along with her storm forestaysail, were all the canvas Destiny could show now.
    “Nor’east-by-east, aye, Sir!” he shouted back while rainwater and spray ran from his iron-gray beard. “Close as we can, Sir!” he promised, and Yairley nodded and slapped