Quotation from: Elsinore

Written by: Jack London


The condition of the men grows deplorable. They were always poor at
pulling on ropes, but now it takes two or three to pull as much as
one used to pull. One thing in their favour is that they are well,
though grossly, fed. They have all they want to eat, such as it is,
but it is the cold and wet, the terrible condition of the forecastle,
the lack of sleep, and the almost continuous toil of both watches on
deck. Either watch is so weak and worthless that any severe task
requires the assistance of the other watch. As an instance, we
finally managed a reef in the fore-sail in the thick of a gale. It
took both watches two hours, yet Mr. Pike tells me that under similar
circumstances, with an average crew of the old days, he has seen a
single watch reef the foresail in twenty minutes.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
Change Tag: ~~ 0 ~~
Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.