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en rushing to their stations, left Joe Fergusson and I rolling on the deck. "Let go!" next cried the captain; adding a moment later, "Bosun, go forward and slack off the head sheets!" And then the rain came down in a perfect deluge, as if it were being emptied out of a tub, and as it only can pour down in the tropics; and that is how we "crossed the Line!" CHAPTER ELEVEN. "ONE PIECEE COCK-FIGHTEE." The ship had nearly all her canvas spread, so as to take advantage of the first puff of air which came to waft us beyond the Doldrums towards the region of the south-east trades, then beginning to blow just below the calm belt; consequently, it took all hands some time to clew up and furl all the light upper sails, and squall after squall burst over us ere we could reduce the ship to her proper fighting trim of reefed topsails and courses, our outer jib getting torn to shreds before it could be handed. "Begorra, it's a buster an' no mishtake!" exclaimed Tim Rooney coming off the forecastle as soon as he had seen the other head sails attended to, and setting me free from the lashings with which his whilom tritons had bound my hands and legs. "Sp'ilin' all av our fun, too, Misther Gray-ham, jist whin I wor goin' to shave ye!" I did not regret this, though, I'm sure. Still, I did not stop to answer him, being in too great a hurry to join Tom Jerrold and the others aft in taking in the mizzen-royal and topgallant--my fellow apprentices having had time already to get aloft while I was rolling on the deck forward like a trussed fowl! "Take it aisy, me darlint," shouted Tim after me as I rushed up the poop ladder and swung myself into the shrouds; but, I was half-way up the ratlines before he could get out the end of his exordium, "Aisy does it!" I was too late to help hand the royal, my especial sail since I had got familiar with my footing aloft; but the mizzen-topgallant sheets, bowlines and halliards having been hardly a second let go, and the men on the poop having only just begun to haul on the clewlines and buntlines, I was quite in time to get out on this yard. My aid, indeed, came in usefully in assisting to stow the sail; although, in my haste not to be eclipsed by Tom Jerrold, I nearly got knocked off my perch on the foot-rope through the canvas ballooning out, in the same way as it did when Joe Fergusson so narrowly escaped death only three weeks or so before! The fright, as I clutched hold
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