of the burial he laid his hand on the old horseshoe nailed
as a charm to the foremast, and solemnly told us that, in less than
three weeks, not one quarter of our number would remain aboard the
ship--by that time they would have left her for ever.

Some laughed; Flash Jack called him an old fool; but among the men
generally it produced a marked effect. For several days a degree of
quiet reigned among us, and allusions of such a kind were made to
recent events, as could be attributed to no other cause than the
Finn's omen.

For my own part, what had lately come to pass was not without its
influence. It forcibly brought to mind our really critical condition.
Doctor Long Ghost, too, frequently revealed his apprehensions, and
once assured me that he would give much to be safely landed upon any
island around us.

Where we were, exactly, no one but the mate seemed to know, nor
whither we were going. The captain--a mere cipher--was an invalid in
his cabin; to say nothing more of so many of his men languishing in
the forecastle.

Our keeping the sea under these circumstances, a matter strange enough
at first, now seemed wholly unwarranted; and added to all was the
thought that our fate was absolutely in the hand of the reckless
Jermin. Were anything to happen to him, we would be left without a
navigator, for, according to Jermin himself, he had, from the
commencement of the voyage, always kept the ship's reckoning, the
captain's nautical knowledge being insufficient.

But considerations like these, strange as it may seem, seldom or never
occurred to the crew. They were alive only to superstitious fears;
and when, in apparent contradiction to the Finn's prophecy, the sick
men rallied a little, they began to recover their former spirits, and
the recollection of what had occurred insensibly faded from their
minds. In a week's time, the unworthiness of Little Jule as a sea
vessel, always a subject of jest, now became more so than ever. In the
forecastle, Flash Jack, with his knife, often dug into the dank,
rotten planks ribbed between us and death, and flung away the
splinters with some sea joke.

As to the remaining invalids, they were hardly ill enough to occasion
any serious apprehension, at least for the present, in the breasts of
such thoughtless beings as themselves. And even those who suffered
the most, studiously refrained from any expression of pain.

The truth is, that among sailors as a class, sickness at sea is