Afternoon Aloft, 1st July

Things weren't moving about nearly as much now, and Oxley risked opening his eyes again. "Gissa hand up an' I'll shift outta the way," he said to Chicken, not entirely certain he could scramble up to the top from where he was.

Oh. Right. Belatedly, Dyer put a hand out to help Oxley get up onto the mast platform.

"Pass that 'spike an' twine out, nipper," he said to Button.

Oxley scrambled up, grateful to have something below his feet that wasn't open air and a very far-off looking deck.

~ ~ ~

Terry gave Chicken a slightly resentful look - he'd only just got back to feeling anything like normal - but took the twine and marlinspike anyway. He made sure to wrap the marlinspike's cord around his thin wrist before going anywhere with it, though - there would be some serious to-do if it slipped and landed on anyone on deck - and gingerly repeated his manoeuvres of earlier, not yet trusting the foot-rope, despite the fact that Cob Chase was still standing on it.

"Silly beggar," said Dyer with a raised eyebrow. He hadn't thought the lad would take his remark to mean Button should take the needed tools out to Chase. "Give that here, an' get back up there."

"Well, you oughta make sure a body knows wha' you mean," Terry muttered, complying with the man's instruction. "I can't read ya brain, ya know." Lubber, he added privately, though that was one insult he'd never dare voice to a grown sailor.

Rolling his eyes, Dyer didn't bother to reply, but instead ran out along the top of the yard toward Chase, his arms held out for balance.

"Took you long 'nuff," Chase remarked blandly, reaching up to grab the marlinspike and twine from Dyer's hand.

From below came a gruff bellow of, "Quit larkin' about, you swine, an' get back down here!"

Terry didn't even want to think how Chicken could balance on top of the yard like that! It was bad enough just sitting on it, never mind anything else. He wondered if he'd ever have the skill to do that, and decided that he wasn't entirely sure he wanted it.

He risked a quick peek over the edge of the platform. "Oh cripes - it's Mister Colburn!"

Sod him, Chase thought, making sure the twine was secure to the marlinspike before spinning it like a grapnel. He leaned out away from the yard and gave the marlinspike go, and grinned when it wrapped around the loose-hanging footrope. That had been easier than he'd expected.

"Now watch, this's how a knot gets checked properly," Chase said to the boys and ignored the outstuck tongue from Dyer. He had the stirrup in one hand and the slack of the footrope in the other. With slow movements, he tied the bowline around the footrope, so the lads could see.

It wasn't any different from how Terry had tied his knot, that the boy could see. And he was pretty sure it was his knot that had come undone.

He was going to practise that knot till he could tie it with no fear of it coming undone, ever!

"An' now, down we goes." Chase let the stirrup and footrope drop, then slung himself down onto the footrope. The knot held. He finished the necessary checking of the other knots in the same manner he had before, and met with no further mishap.

"Good bit of fun, weren't it?" He asked as he clambered up onto the platform again.

"Dunno as I'd call it fun e-zackly," Terry said. 'Fun' would be a proper skylarking, or an evening listening to the older men singing forebitters on the foc'sle or something, not getting scared half to death up on the foreyard trying to do something you had the barest idea how to do.

He grinned as he slung the coil of old footrope across his body, over the strap of the pitch bucket. "You'll get to thinkin' otherwise soon 'nuff," Chase said cheerfully, and slipped over the edge of the platform to the futtock shrouds.

"We all knows you come 'ere rather'n goin' to Bedlam," Terry said, and followed him into the futtock shrouds without a second thought. He could do this bit all right. It was impossible to look down from this angle, after all - and anyway, he and the other ship's boys used the futtock shrouds all the time when they were having a proper skylarking.

"How'd you come to be a Tar any'ow?" he added, not caring that the question negated his earlier statement.

Bedlam. No, that would be where Dyer had come from.

"Asked to," was Chase's reply. "Walked down to the beach, 'cause Hazard sloop was in the bay, an' asked 'em."

"You volunteered?!" It was a marvel Terry didn't slip off the ratlines at that revelation. "Why?"

Why would anyone volunteer to go to sea if they didn't have to? Terry liked it at sea, but he probably wouldn't have come if the Foundling Home and Marine Society hadn't made him.

Chase shrugged slightly. "Why not? I was born by the sea, so it were only nat'ral."

"Yeah... but the Navy?" It didn't make sense - why would anyone join the Navy if they didn't have to? Though it wasn't particularly a bad life, not by Terry's previous experience, anyway.

Chase's feet touched the spray-slickened chains, then he swung down onto the deck. "Either the Navy or the smugglers," he answered. "An' bein' in the Navy won't get you hanged."

Terry shrugged at that, landing on the deck next to the sailor a few seconds afterwards. He got out of the way of the other two and looked from one sailor to the other. "What're we doin' now?" he asked.

"First thing's to turn this lot over to the bo'sun. Then I'm gonna get some twine - you needs an education, I think."

"Wha' fer?" he wanted to know. He hadn't been aboard Terpsy that long, but he was starting to learn his ropes, he thought. Anyway, it wasn't like he needed to know stuff - there was ages to go before he was rated a second-class boy, after all.

"Every sailin' lad needs to start sommers," said Chase, moving toward where Mister Watts was in conversation with the carpenter. " 'Specially if you don't wanna be like Dyer over yon."

"Ain't nuffin' wrong wiv 'im," Terry said loyally. He hadn't expected anyone here to know the cant, and to find that Dyer did... it was sort of like being home again. Not that the Home was that, really, despite the name.

There was a pause while Chase returned the bucket of pitch, the brush, and the old footrope to the boatswain. Then, on being dismissed, the foretopman turned to head toward the foc's'le.

"Oh sure, there ain't. 'Cept his brain's nothin' but feathers."

His reward for the remark, which was overheard by Dyer, was a smirk and a quick, rude gesture. Chase grinned. Once his back was turned, he knew Dyer would make a similar remark about him to Oxley. It was the way things went.

"Anyways. Knots. The simpler ones, mind. If you ain't got duties of yer own need tendin' to?"

"I c'n do a reef knot, an' a bowline." Though obviously not as well as a grown sailor, or it wouldn't have come undone at such an awful moment. "Though mebbe not as... as tight as you c'n do it," he added, hoping Chase wasn't going to think he'd nearly dropped the sailor to the deck by leaving it badly tied on purpose.