The lowermost sail on a mizzenmast

Usage examples of crossjack.

Jack altered course to bring the wind from right aft to near enough her quarter for the crossjack not to becalm the maincourse: she gathered way at once.

Crouching under the foot of the crossjack, that anomalous, inconvenient sail, he took the wheel himself.

Sling in half a dozen in a wet blanket from the crossjack yard, just under the windward side of the awning.

All this while the chasers had been barking at one another with no greater effect than pierced sails and some cut rigging, but by the time the crossjack was giving its almost unknown and potentially very dangerous thrust the Cornélie had made up the distance lost during her broadsides and she was gaining fast.

The crossjack yard was still, as the French say, a vergue seche,-- a barren yard,-- and the Bounty's driver, though loose at the foot, was of the gaff-headed type, then superseding the clumsy lateen our ships had carried on the mizzen for centuries.

She had a spare main topgallant mast at the fore, swayed up by main force and the grace of God in an impossible sea, a crossjack yard for her forecourse, and her knotted rigging was an ugly sight.