halyard

Better throw the halyards down on deck and make the watch stand by.

"In the meantime throw your halyards down on deck and look to your wheel.

Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them.

My salmon boat was a-soak, but in the snug cabin of the sloop dry blankets and a dry bunk were mine; and we lay and smoked and yarned of old days, while overhead the wind screamed through the rigging and taut halyards drummed against the mast.

At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water, and since, pull as I liked, I could not budge the downhall, that was the extent of what I could accomplish.

A knife drawn across the fore halyards would bring the foresail down, and put an end to our liberty in twenty minutes.

Billy could hear them throwing down the halyards, casting off gaskets, and heaving the anchor short on the tiny winch.

All hands obeyed, and at once the eight or ten seamen who composed the crew, sprang to their respective stations at the spanker brails and outhaul, topsail sheets and halyards, the jib downhaul, and the topsail clewlines and buntlines.

The ends of all the running ropes, with the exception of the signal halyards and poop-down-haul, were rove through snatch-blocks,and led to the capstan or windlass, so that not a yard was braced or a sad set without the assistance of machinery.

Pausing long enough to let go the jib halyards, and just as the Reindeer cleared and began to drift astern, I leaped aboard the junk with a line and made fast.