"
But it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain
to mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had
parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying
from side to side, completely sweeping the entire after part
of the deck. The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly,
was swept overboard; all hands were in a panic; and to attempt
snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed madness. It flew from
right to left, and back again, almost in one ticking of a watch,
and every instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters.
Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of being done;
those on deck rushed toward the bows, and stood eyeing the boom
as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst
of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees,
and crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope,
secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other
like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head,
and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe.
The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were
clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist,
darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap.
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