scientific navigator, but no sailor;--afraid of his shadow,
he had not a particle of confidence in his own judgment; every body
was listened to, and he readily yielded his opinions without argument
or controversy. Our chief officer, a Catalonian cousin of the captain,
made no pretensions to seamanship, yet he was a good mathematician. I
still remember the laughs I had at the care he took of his lily-white
hands, and the jokes we cracked upon his girl-like manners, voice, and
conversation. The boatswain, who was in his watch, assured me that he
rarely gave an order without humming it out to a tune of some favorite
opera.

In this fantastic group, I occupied the position of supernumerary
officer and interpreter; but accustomed, as I had been, to wholesome
_American_ seamanship and discipline, I trembled not a little when I
discovered the amazing ignorance of the master, and observed the utter
worthlessness of our crew. These things made me doubly vigilant; and
sometimes I grieved that I was not still in Regla, or on the _paseo_.
On the tenth day out, a northwester began to pipe and ripen to a gale
as the sea rose with it. Sail had been soon diminished on the
schooner; but when I was relieved in my watch by the first officer, I
hinted to the captain that it would be best to lay the vessel to as
soon as possible. We had been scudding before the tempest for some
hours under a close-reefed foresail, and I feared if we did not bring
our craft to the wind at once, we would either run her under, or be
swamped in attempting the manoeuvre when the waves got higher. The
captain, however, with his usual submission to the views of the wrong
person, took the advice of the helmsman, who happened to be older than
I, and the schooner was allowed to dash on either through or over the
seas, at the speed of a racer.

By this time the forward deck was always under water, and the men
gathered abaft the trunk to keep as dry as possible. Officers and crew
were huddled together pell-mell, and, with our usual loose discipline,
every body joined in the conversation and counsel. Before sundown I
again advised the laying-to of the schooner; but the task had now
become so formidable that the men who dreaded the job, assured the
captain that the wind would fall as the moon arose. Yet, when the dim
orb appeared above the thick, low-drifting scud, the gale _increased_.
The light rather hinted than revealed the frightful scene around that
egg-shell on