"Broad on our lee-bow," I answered, still clinging to the thin wire topmast shrouds.
Cat-harping is the name for a purchase of ropes employed to brace in the shrouds of the lower masts behind their yards.
She does not run up the shrouds of the mast-work to seize the desperate prisoner; she waits until his bonds of threads, twisted backwards and forwards, make him fall on the web.