-dozen persons, some of whom, by their dress,
seemed to be sailors, and others citizens. As he turned to look at
them, two or three, who were his acquaintances, saluted him; and the
conversation, which his entrance had a little interrupted, flowed
again with a full current.

"A queer bit of a town, good-man Fairweather, the saints have built up
for themselves," exclaimed a man in a sailor's jacket. "Do you know
what it looks like to me?"

"How should I know, Capt. Sparhawk, how Boston looks to you?" answered
the man addressed.

"That depends upon the strength of the liquor, methinks," said a
third.

"That answer, Billy Pantry," said the Captain, "for a lubber that
knows not the difference between the futtock shrouds and Jacob's
ladder, and whose head is so little and his paunch so big, is what my
old schoolmaster called a Lucy--Lucy--damn the other part of the
name--there I miss stays, by Neptune!--anyhow, it begun with a Nat,
but there was more of it."

"Natwood," suggested Billy Pantry. "I know a Polly Natwood in Suffolk,
one of the completest wenches"--

"If she was not completer than thy wit," interrupted the Captain, "her
figure-head was left unfinished. But, avast there; we are drifting off
soundings. Where was I? Aye; belay, I have it. I was telling you what
your beggarly town looks like."

"Aye, but about Lucy," said another, who had not spoken before, and
whose perception looked dimly out of his hazy eyes! "I should like to
hear first about her. I always liked the women."

"Hear old Wheat," cried the Captain--"the wicked villain. All the
knowledge he has of the women, I'll be qualified on the main brace, is
what he got from Betty Quickfist when she hit him a cuff on the ear
for his impudence, and twisted it out o' shape, as ye may see without
taking a quadrant for the observation."

"Why," said Billy Pantry, turning his mess-mate's head about, "his two
ears are much alike, and, as you say, Captain, lop damnably; so he
must have caught it on both of them, though this one here, away to
windward, looks as if it had been cut off and stuck on again."

"Shut up your duff-trap," said Wheat, gruffly, "or I'll send your
teeth on a cruise down your throat."

"Come, come," cried the Captain, "I choose to do all the quarreling
for this company. How now, my masters, is there to be no discipline
when my foot is off the quarter-deck? If another man speaks above his
breath, by the beard of father Neptune, I will