I understood the mechanics of levers; but where was I to get a fulcrum?
There was the mainmast, fifteen inches in diameter at what was now the butt, still sixty-five feet in length, and weighing, I roughly calculated, at least three thousand pounds.

And then came the foremast, larger in diameter, and weighing surely thirty-five hundred pounds.
Where was I to begin?
Maud stood silently by my side, while I evolved in my mind the contrivance known among sailors as "shears." But, though known to sailors, I invented it there on Endeavour Island.

By crossing and lashing the ends of two spars, and then elevating them in the air like an inverted "V," I could get a point above the deck to which to make fast my hoisting tackle.

To this hoisting tackle I could, if necessary, attach a second hoisting tackle.

And then there was the windlass! Maud saw that I had achieved a solution, and her eyes warmed sympathetically.
"What are you going to do ?" she asked.
"Clear that raffle," I answered, pointing to the tangled wreckage overside.
Ah, the decisiveness, the very sound of the words, was good in my ears.
"Clear that raffle!" Imagine so salty a phrase on the lips of the Humphrey Van Weyden of a few months gone! There must have been a touch of the melodramatic in my pose and voice, for Maud smiled.