b-like fashion--half
sailing, half drifting, and burying her bows deeply every now and then
in the heavy rollers she was powerless now to ride over, and rising
again from the water so sluggishly that it sometimes seemed impossible
that she would recover herself, but must founder, whenever she took a
deeper plunge than usual.

Bye and bye, Mr Lathrope came on deck escorting Kate Meldrum; although
our heroine looked more like escorting him, for he was very pale and
appeared much thinner than before--if that were possible to one
belonging to the order of "Pharaoh's lean kine!"

It was the first appearance of the American outside the cuddy since the
accident that had crippled him, and he could not help noticing the
altered state of the ship--having last seen her just before she
encountered the cyclone.

"Snakes and alligators, Cap, but you hev hed it rough, and no mistake!"
said he to Captain Dinks, gazing with surprise at the broken bulwarks,
which had been torn away when the masts went by the board, the wrecked
forecastle, and the unsightly stumps to which the jury-masts had been
attached, which now occupied the place of the tall graceful spars and
neatly-braced yards, with the canvas smoothly stowed away in shipshape
fashion, that he had left so trim when he went below that stormy night.
"Why, you're busted up entirely, I guess!"

"Not quite yet, I hope," replied Captain Dinks, smiling mournfully as
he, too, looked around; "but, the old _Nancy_ has been sadly battered
about. Ah, Mr Lathrope, if she hadn't been a stout built one, she'd
have gone to the bottom before this!"

"You bet!" said the American, humouring this little remaining bit of
pride the old seaman had in the ship he had commanded for so many years,
a pride that was mingled with a sorrow at her approaching end, which he
could foresee and mourn over, as if the vessel had been a living
thing--"she's been a clipper in her time, and made a smart fit for it;
but, the winds and the waves have licked her at last, same as they done
me, when they squoze in my durned ribs t'other day."

But, the captain could not laugh at what the other had said as a joke
about himself, just in order to banish the poor skipper's gloom. It
seemed to him a sort of sacrilege towards the _Nancy Bell_ to liken her
mortal injuries to the mere temporary ones of the American; so he turned
the conversation.

"I hope you feel better now?" he said.

"Wa-al, I ain't downright slick an