,
whose name was Captain Truck, played at checkers; and I amused myself
for a while by watching the trouble they had in keeping the men in the
proper places. Just at the most exciting point of the game, the ship
would careen, and down would go the white checkers pell-mell among the
black. Then my father laughed, but Captain Truck would grow very angry,
and vow that he would have won the game in a move or two more, if
the confounded old chicken-coop--that's what he called the ship--hadn't
lurched.

"I--I think I will go to bed now, please," I said, laying my band on my
father's knee, and feeling exceedingly queer.

It was high time, for the Typhoon was plunging about in the most
alarming fashion. I was speedily tucked away in the upper berth, where
I felt a trifle more easy at first. My clothes were placed on a narrow
shelf at my feet, and it was a great comfort to me to know that my
pistol was so handy, for I made no doubt we should fall in with
Pirates before many hours. This is the last thing I remember with any
distinctness. At midnight, as I was afterwards told, we were struck by
a gale which never left us until we came in sight of the Massachusetts
coast.

For days and days I had no sensible idea of what was going on around me.
That we were being hurled somewhere upside-down, and that I didn't like
it, was about all I knew. I have, indeed, a vague impression that my
father used to climb up to the berth and call me his "Ancient Mariner,"
bidding me cheer up. But the Ancient Mariner was far from cheering up,
if I recollect rightly; and I don't believe that venerable navigator
would have cared much if it had been announced to him, through a
speaking-trumpet, that "a low, black, suspicious craft, with raking
masts, was rapidly bearing down upon us!"

In fact, one morning, I thought that such was the case, for bang! went
the big cannon I had noticed in the bow of the ship when we came on
board, and which had suggested to me the idea of Pirates. Bang! went
the gun again in a few seconds. I made a feeble effort to get at my
trousers-pocket! But the Typhoon was only saluting Cape Cod--the
first land sighted by vessels approaching the coast from a southerly
direction.

The vessel had ceased to roll, and my sea-sickness passed away as
rapidly as it came. I was all right now, "only a little shaky in my
timbers and a little blue about the gills," as Captain Truck remarked to
my mother, who, like myself, had been confine