I now jumped to the jib-halyards and down-haul, getting that sail reduced; then I half-brailed the spanker; this was done lest my hold on the yard should give way.

We took down the topsails and furled the spanker.

Bang went the spanker, and then bang the spencer, both sails at once flying out to leeward in streamers, and flapping to tatters before the men could spring on the booms to secure them.

I then hauled out the spanker, and gave it sheet.

She also had a fine, handsome, strong hand admirable for spanking, but she had so many invisible methods of discipline at her command that she never needed a visible spanker for Peter.

"Quite true, sir, in name, but your honor will recollect the spanker is nothing but a fore-and-aft course, rigged to a mast, instead of to a jack-yard, as it used to be.

One cannot," he continued, as who should say, "Let us be reasonable," "one cannot, to take a parallel case, imagine the colonel commanding the garrison at a naval station going on board a battleship and ordering the crew to splice the jibboom spanker.

I was standing near by, trimming the spanker.