It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but
everybody worked with a will. Some, indeed, looked as though they
thought the "old man" was mad, but no one said a word. We had had a
new topmast studding-sail made with a reef in it,- a thing hardly
ever heard of, and which the sailors had ridiculed a good deal, saying
that when it was time to reef a studding-sail, it was time to take
it in. But we found a use for it now; for, there being a reef in the
topsail, the studding-sail could not be set without one in it also. To
be sure, a studding-sail with reefed topsails was rather a new
thing; yet there was some reason in it, for if we carried that away,
we should lose only a sail and a boom; but a whole topsail might
have carried away the mast and all.
While we were aloft, the sail had been got out, bent to the yard,
reefed, and ready for hoisting. Waiting for a good opportunity, the
halyards were manned and the yard hoisted fairly up to the block;
but when the mate came to shake the catspaw out of the downhaul, and
we began to boom-end the sail, it shook the ship to her centre. The
boom buckled up and bent like a whip-stick, and we looked every moment
to see something go; but, being of the short, tough upland spruce,
it bent like whalebone, and nothing could break it.
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