Explore "Redburn" by Herman Melville on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a little more consideration, though not at all relaxing in a certain air of professional superiority. For the mere knowing of the names of the ropes, and familiarizing yourself with their places, so that you can lay hold of them in the darkest night; and the loosing and furling of the canvas, and reefing topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though of course forming an indispensable part of a seaman's vocation, and the business in which he is principally engaged; yet these are things which a beginner of ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far inferior to many other matters familiar to an _"able seaman. "_
What did I know, for instance, about _striking a top-gallant-mast,_ and sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have _turned in a dead-eye,_ or in the approved nautical style have _clapt a seizing on the main-stay? _ What did I know of _"passing a gammoning," "reiving a Burton," "strapping a shoe-block," "clearing a foul hawse,"_ and innumerable other intricacies?