swift them.'
'They bring the messenger to the capstan: the gunner ties its rounded ends together. What are they called, Maturin?'
'Let us not be too pedantic, for all love. The whole point is, the messenger is now endless: it is a serpent that has swallowed its own tail.'
'I cannot see it,' said Standish, leaning far out over the rail. 'Where is this messenger?'
'Why,' said Martin, 'it is that rope they are putting over the rollers just beneath us in the waist, a vast loop that goes from the capstan to two other stout vertical rollers by the hawse-holes and so back.'
'I do not understand. I see the capstan, but there is no rope round it at all.'
'What you see is the upper capstan,' said Stephen with some complacency. 'The messenger is twined about the lower part, under the quarterdeck. But both the lower and the upper part are equipped with bars: both turn: both heave, as we say. See, they undo the deck-stoppers, or dog-stoppers as some superficial observers call them - they loosen the starboard cable, the cable on the right-hand side - they throw off the turn about the riding-bitts! What force and dexterity!'
'They bring the messenger to the cable - they bind it to the cable with nippers.'
'Where? Where? I cannot see.'
'Of course not. They are right forward, by the hawse-holes, where the cable comes into the ship, under the forecastle.'
'But presently,' said Stephen in a comforting tone, 'you will perceive the cable come creeping aft, led by the messenger.'
John Foley, the Shelmerston fiddler, skipped on to the capstan-head; at his first notes the men at the bars stepped out, and after the first turns that brought on the strain, three deep voices and one clear tenor sang
Yeo heave ho, round the capstan go,
Heave men with a will
Tramp and tramp it still
The anchor must be weighed,
the anchor must be weighed
joined by all in a roaring
Yeo heave ho
Yeo heave ho
five times repeated before the three struck in again
Yeo heave ho, raise her from below
Heave men with a will
Tramp and tramp it still
The anchor's off the ground,
the anchor's off the ground
'There is your cable,' said Martin in a very much louder voice, after the first few lines.
'So it is,' said Standish; and having stared at it coming in like a great wet serpent he went on, 'But it is not going to the capstan at all.'
'Certainly not,' said Stephen in a screech above the full chorus. 'It is far too thick to bend round the capstan; furthermore, it is loaded with the vile mud of Tagus.'
'They undo the flippers and let the cable down the main hatchway and so to the orlop, where they coil it on the cable-tiers,' said Martin. 'And they hurry back with the flippers to bind fresh cable to the messenger as it travels round.'
'How active they are,' observed Stephen. 'See how diligently they answer Captain Pullings' request to light along the messenger, that is to say pull along the slack on that side which is not heaving in -'
'And how they run with the flippers: Davies has knocked Plaice flat.'
'What are those men doing with the other cable?' asked Standish.
'They are veering it out,' answered Martin quickly.
'You are to understand that we are moored,' said Stephen. 'In other words we are held by two anchors, widely separated; when we approach the one, therefore, by pulling on its cable, the cable belonging to the other must necessarily be let out, and this is done by the veering cable-men. But their task is almost over, for if I do not mistake we are short stay apeak. I say we are short stay apeak.'
But before he could insist upon this term, better than any Martin could produce, and reasonably accurate, a voice from the forecastle called 'Heave and a-weigh, sir,' whereupon Jack cried 'Heave and rally' with great force. All the veerers ran to the bars, the fiddler fiddled extremely fast, and with a violent, grunting yeo heave ho they broke the anchor from its bed and ran it up to the bows.
The subsequent operations, the hooking of the cat to the anchor-ring, the running of the anchor up to the cat.head, the fishing of the anchor, the shifting of the messenger for the other cable (which of course required a contrary turn), and many more, were too rapid and perhaps too obscure to be explained before Jack gave the order 'Up anchor' and the music started again; but this time they sang
We'll heave him up from down below
