Better throw the halyards down on deck and make the watch stand by.

Of course they'll sleep, but make them sleep on the halyards and sheets." Jerry roused to Skipper's entrance under the blanket, and, quite as if it were a long-established custom, curled in between his arm and side, and, after one happy sniff and one kiss of his cool little tongue, as Skipper pressed his cheek against him caressingly, dozed off to sleep.
Half an hour later, to all intents and purposes, so far as Jerry could or could not comprehend, the world might well have seemed suddenly coming to an end.

What awoke him was the flying leap of Skipper that sent the blanket one way and Jerry the other.

The deck of the _Arangi_ had become a wall, down which Jerry slipped through the roaring dark.

Every rope and shroud was thrumming and screeching in resistance to the fierce weight of the squall.
"Stand by main halyards!--Jump!" he could hear Skipper shouting loudly; also he heard the high note of the mainsheet screaming across the sheaves as Van Horn, bending braces in the dark, was swiftly slacking the sheet through his scorching palms with a single turn on the cleat.
While all this, along with many other noises, squealings of boat-boys and shouts of Borckman, was impacting on Jerry's ear-drums, he was still sliding down the steep deck of his new and unstable world.