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- 7613
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7549
- text
- his frenzied heedlessness let go his hold on the _tie_.
“You, Baldy! are you afraid of falling?” cried the First Lieutenant.
At that moment, with all his force, Baldy jumped down upon the sail;
the _bunt gasket_ parted; and a dark form dropped through the air.
Lighting upon the _top-rim_, it rolled off; and the next instant, with
a horrid crash of all his bones, Baldy came, like a thunderbolt, upon
the deck.
Aboard of most large men-of-war there is a stout oaken platform, about
four feet square, on each side of the quarter-deck. You ascend to it by
three or four steps; on top, it is railed in at the sides, with
horizontal brass bars. It is called _the Horse Block;_ and there the
officer of the deck usually stands, in giving his orders at sea.
It was one of these horse blocks, now unoccupied, that broke poor
Baldy’s fall. He fell lengthwise across the brass bars, bending them
into elbows, and crushing the whole oaken platform, steps and all,
right down to the deck in a thousand splinters.
He was picked up for dead, and carried below to the surgeon. His bones
seemed like those of a man broken on the wheel, and no one thought he
would survive the night. But with the surgeon’s skillful treatment he
soon promised recovery. Surgeon Cuticle devoted all his science to this
case.
A curious frame-work of wood was made for the maimed man; and placed in
this, with all his limbs stretched out, Baldy lay flat on the floor of
the Sick-bay, for many weeks. Upon our arrival home, he was able to
hobble ashore on crutches; but from a hale, hearty man, with bronzed
cheeks, he was become a mere dislocated skeleton, white as foam; but
ere this, perhaps, his broken bones are healed and whole in the last
repose of the man-of-war’s-man.
Not many days after Baldy’s accident in furling sails—in this same
frenzied manner, under the stimulus of a shouting officer—a seaman fell
from the main-royal-yard of an English line-of-battle ship near us, and
buried his ankle-bones in the deck, leaving two indentations there, as
if scooped out by a carpenter’s gouge.
The royal-yard forms a cross with the mast, and falling from that lofty
cross in a line-of-battle ship is almost like falling from the cross of
St. Paul’s; almost like falling as Lucifer from the well-spring of
morning down to the Phlegethon of night.
In some cases, a man, hurled thus from a yard, has fallen upon his own
shipmates in the tops, and dragged them down with him to the same
destruction with himself.
Hardly ever will you hear of a man-of-war returning home after a
cruise, without the loss of some of her crew from aloft, whereas
similar accidents in the merchant service—considering the much greater
number of men employed in it—are comparatively few.
Why mince the matter? The death of most of these man-of-war’s-men lies
at the door of the souls of those officers, who, while safely standing
on deck themselves, scruple not to sacrifice an immortal man or two, in
order to show off the excelling discipline of the ship. And thus do
_the people_ of the gun-deck suffer, that the Commodore on the poop may
be glorified.
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