o_199m9vauin7s89a1ibd1tc12gd4g.pdf

"
Truly this is a wonderful place," said the painter ;
46 THE KING'S YARD
The long, low buildings stretched east and west
across the Yard from the great wall on the town side
to the water's edge, almost on the other.
More than
a thousand feet they ran, the rope walks looking, from
a bird's-eye view of the Yard, like a parallel ruler laid
upon it, and beside them, running half their length,
was the hemp house. All over the Yard the clang
of the anchor forgers in the blacksmiths' shops, and
the dull strokes of the shipwrights' mallets at the
building slips, drowned all noises, except when you
came to the rope walks. Then the clatter of the
whirls or spinning wheels shut out every other sound,
and when a stranger entered the building a gun might
have been fired alongside of him, and the chances
are he would not have heard it.
On the ground floor of the rope walk, when the
painter first saw it, they were twisting
a cable for a
seventy-four gun ship, and it took eighty men to
work the job, while on the floor above, groups of men
were spinning light ratline stuff, one man in each
group turning the wheel, and a couple of men walking
to and fro the twisting line, tending the strands as
they revolved with the whirls, each rope and line
having
for its heart the white thread that marked it
as the King's.
"there be many men working here, Mr. Mildwater.