wo-inch rope, girding the boat
with it and confining the fore end of the sail to the turtle-back, when,
with the aid of one of the stretchers, we were able to heave this girth-
rope so taut as to render it impossible for the sail to blow away. But
before heaving it taut, we passed a second girth-rope round the boat
over the after turtle-back, next connecting both girth-ropes together by
lengths of rope running fore and aft along the outside of the boat
underneath the edge of the top strake. The doubled mainsail was then
strained taut across the boat, and its edges tucked underneath the fore-
and-aft lines outside the boat; the foresail was treated in the same
way, but with its fore edge overlapped by about a foot of the after edge
of the mainsail. Our girth-ropes were then hove taut, with the finished
result that we had a canvas deck covering the boat from the fore turtle-
back to within about six feet of the after one. The edges of the sails
were next turned up and secured by seizings on either side, and our deck
was complete. But, as it then stood, I was not satisfied with it, for
at the after extremity of it there was an opening some six feet long,
and as wide as the boat, through which a very considerable quantity of
water might enter--quite enough, indeed, to swamp the boat. And with
our canvas deck lying flat, as it then was, there was no doubt that very
large quantities of water would wash over it, and pour down through the
opening, should the sea run heavily. Our deck needed to be sloped
upward from the forward to the after end of the boat, so that any water
which might break over it would flow off on either side before reaching
the opening to which I have referred. We accordingly laid the boat's
mainmast along the thwarts fore and aft, amidships, and lashed the heel
firmly to the middle of the foremost thwart. Then, by lashing our two
longest stretchers together, we made a crutch for the head or after end
of the mast to rest in; when, by placing this crutch upright in the
stern-sheets against the back-board, we were able to raise the mast
underneath the sails until it not only formed a sort of ridge-pole,
converting the sails into a sloping roof, but it also strained the
canvas as tight as a drum-head, rendering it so much the less liable to
blow away, while it at the same time afforded a smooth surface for the
water to pour off, and it also possessed the further advantage that it
gave us a little more h