ere's to
the junk trade!" he would say, as he held out his can of sherry.

"Why do you always say that?" asked Tommy.

"I had an uncle in the business," replied Mac, and launched at once into
a yarn, in which an incredible number of the characters were "laid
out as nice as you would want to see," and the oaths made up about
two-fifths of every conversation.

Only once he gave them a taste of his violence; he talked of it, indeed,
often; "I'm rather a voilent man," he would say, not without pride; but
this was the only specimen. Of a sudden, he turned on Hemstead in the
ship's waist, knocked him against the foresail boom, then knocked him
under it, and had set him up and knocked him down once more, before any
one had drawn a breath.

"Here! Belay that!" roared Wicks, leaping to his feet. "I won't have
none of this."

Mac turned to the captain with ready civility. "I only want to learn him
manners," said he. "He took and called me Irishman."

"Did he?" said Wicks. "O, that's a different story! What made you do it,
you tomfool? You ain't big enough to call any man that."

"I didn't call him it," spluttered Hemstead, through his blood and
tears. "I only mentioned-like he was."

"Well, let's have no more of it," said Wicks.

"But you ARE Irish, ain't you?" Carthew asked of his new shipmate
shortly after.

"I may be," replied Mac, "but I'll allow no Sydney duck to call me so.
No," he added, with a sudden heated countenance, "nor any Britisher that
walks! Why, look here," he went on, "you're a young swell, aren't you?
Suppose I called you that! 'I'll show you,' you would say, and turn to
and take it out of me straight."

On the 28th of January, when in lat. 27 degrees 20' N., long. 177
degrees W., the wind chopped suddenly into the west, not very strong,
but puffy and with flaws of rain. The captain, eager for easting, made
a fair wind of it and guyed the booms out wing and wing. It was Tommy's
trick at the wheel, and as it was within half an hour of the relief
(seven thirty in the morning), the captain judged it not worth while to
change him.

The puffs were heavy but short; there was nothing to be called a squall,
no danger to the ship, and scarce more than usual to the doubtful spars.
All hands were on deck in their oilskins, expecting breakfast; the
galley smoked, the ship smelt of coffee, all were in good humour to be
speeding eastward a full nine; when the rotten foresail tore suddenly
between two cloths