airs below; and when he was officer of the
watch there was no lolling about the deck or any of the talking that
went on behind the boats and in odd corners, as was the case while "old
growler" had charge.

Everyone then, on the contrary, brightened up and kept to his station;
while even the old quartermaster and helmsman drawing themselves up at
"attention" as soon as the Honourable Digby Lanyard's long, telescopic
form appeared on the poop, just as if he were the commander, or Captain
Farmer himself.

The Honourable was not long inactive, for the sun was already beginning
to sink below the western horizon, lighting up Saint Alban's Head,
abreast of which we were now speeding along, with a bright glare that
displayed every detail of its steep escarpment and the rocky foreshore
at its base; the glorious orb of day presently disappearing beneath the
ocean, leaving a track of radiance behind him across the watery waste
and flooding the heavens overhead with a harmony of vivid colouring in
which every tint of the rainbow was represented--crimson and purple and
gold, melting into rose, that paled again into the most delicate sea--
green and finally became merged in the more neutral tones of night!

"Looks like a change coming, I think," observed Mr Quadrant, the
master, glancing at the sunset more with the eye of a meteorologist than
that of an artist. "Those northerly winds never last long in the
Channel, especially at this time of year."

"The evening's closing in, too," said the "first luff," screwing his
eyeglass more tightly into the corner of his eye and bending his lanky
body over the poop-rail to see if everything was all right on the deck
below, after taking a hurried squint aloft. "I shall shorten sail at
once. Bosun's mate!"

You should have heard him roar out this hail. Why, it made me jump off
my feet as if a cannon had been fired, with a full charge, close to my
head!

"Ay, ay, sir," replied the boatswain's mate, coming under the break of
the poop, so as to be nearer at hand; but there was certainly no
necessity for his approaching in order to hear better, for the
lieutenant's voice would have been audible a mile off, "I'm here, sir."

"Pipe the watch to shorten sail!"

"Ay, ay, sir."

There was no need, though, of pipe or shout from the worthy petty
officer addressed, notwithstanding that the lusty seaman could have
piped and shouted with the best, should duty demand it of him; for, the
lieute