is finger in his pipe, the
very embodiment of the scene--the model of a prime old salt who had
ceased to "rough it," but could do so yet if needful.

"Come, old ship!" said the men near the windlass, as soon as Old Jack
came forward, "give us a yarn, will ye?"

"Yarn!" said Jack, smiling, "what yarn, mates? 'Tis a fine night,
though, for that same--the clouds fly high, and she's balling off a good
ten knots sin' eight bells."

"That she is, bo'--so give us a yarn now, like a reg'lar old A 1 as you
are!" said one.

"'Vast there, mate," said a man-o'-wars-man, winking to the
rest,--"you're always a-cargo-puddling, Bill! D'ye think Old Jack
answers to any other hail nor the Queen's? I say, old three-decker in
or'nary, we all wants one o' your close-laid yarns this good night.
Whaling Jim here rubs his down with a thought over much o' the tar, an'
young Joe dips 'em in yallow varnish--so if you says Nay, why, we'll all
save our grog, and get drunk as soon as may be."

"Well, well, mates," said Jack, endeavoring to conceal his flattered,
feelings, "what is it to be, though?"

"Let's see," said the man-o'-war's-man--"aye, give us the Green Hand!"

"Aye, aye, the Green Hand!" exclaimed one and all. This "Green Hand" was
a story Old Jack had already related several times, but always with such
amusing variations, that it seemed on each repetition a new one--the
listeners testifying their satisfaction by growls of rough laughter, and
by the emphatic way in which, during a pause, they squirted their
tobacco-juice on the deck. What gave additional zest to this particular
yarn, too, was the fact of its hero being no less than the captain
himself, who was at this moment on the poop quarter-deck of the ship,
pointing out something to a group of ladies by the round-house--a tall,
handsome-looking man of about forty, with all the mingled gravity and
frank good humor of a sailor in his firm, weather-tinted countenance. To
have the power of secretly contrasting his present condition and manners
with those delineated by Old Jack's episode from the "skipper's"
previous biography, was the _acme_ of comic delight to these rude sons
of Neptune, and the narrator just hit this point.

"Ye see," began he, "tis about six an' twenty years gone since I was an
able seaman before the mast, in a small Indyman they called the Chester
Castle, lying at that time behind the Isle of Dogs, in sight of Grenidge
Hospital. She was full laden, but there