The man at the "weather earing," or eye for the reef pendent, has to sit astride the yard, and pull the sail towards him.
The foot-rope sometimes slips through the eyes in the stirrups when only one hand goes out upon it, which does, or may, place him in a dangerous position.

During the preceding day, when the barometer indicated a change of weather, Mr.Lowington had sent the old boatswain aloft to "mouse the horses," in anticipation of the manoeuvre which the boys were now compelled to perform at midnight, in a gale of wind.

Mousing the horses was merely fastening the foot-ropes to the eyes of the stirrups, so that they could not slip through, and thus throw the entire slack of the horse under one boy, by which he sank down so low that his neck was even with the spar.
At the foot of each mast there is a contrivance for securing ropes, called the fife-rail.

It is full of belaying pins, to which are secured the sheets, halyards, buntlines, clewlines, lifts, braces, reef tackle, and other ropes leading down from aloft.

Looking at the mast, it seems to be surrounded by a perfect wilderness of ropes, without order or arrangement, whose uses no ordinary mortal could comprehend.