Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/200

188 the false bottom to keep it down, the two lift off the frame, bringing away the pins with it. The false bottom is then lifted off the line, which remains in the box, disposed in the layers of diagonal loops or fakes made by the pins. The line is thus arranged to pay out freely, and fly to a wreck without entanglement or friction. The end is now tied into the eye of the shank of the shot in the gun; the box, which is always placed a few feet to the windward of the gun, is canted up on one side at an angle of about forty-five degrees; and the line is ready for firing. The line is always brought ready faked to the scene of action and fired from the box. In case a second shot is necessary, the line is laid out in large loops upon a tarpaulin spread out upon the beach, which is called French faking. This is done to save time,



twenty-five or thirty minutes being requisite to fake a line properly in the box; but it is less desirable, as exposure to the flying sand or the rain or spray lessens the range by impeding the flight of the line. When the shot-line reaches the wreck, the shore end is connected with the whip or hauling line. This is an endless rope or ellipse, an inch and a half in circumference, and long enough to reach from the shore to the vessel. It is reeved through a pulley-block, having attached to it to several feet of rope called a tail. The shot-line is tied around both parts of the whip, a few feet above the pulley-block, and the crew of the vessel at a signal haul the whip on board by means of the shot-line. With it goes a tablet called a tally-board, on which are printed, in French upon one side and in English upon the other, directions for properly setting up the whip-line on the vessel. When this is done, a signal is made to the shore, and a hawser of sufficient length and four inches in circumference, to which is attached another tally-board, bearing printed directions in English and French for its disposition, is tied to one part of the whip or hauling line, and is sent out to the vessel by the life-saving crew pulling upon the other part. Obeying the directions of this tally-board, the men on the ship fasten the hawser to the mast about eighteen inches above the hauling-line. A crotch,