he
fins of a man as ye would pin a lobster's claw! That for your fastenings
and your lubberly knots together!" The excited topman snapped the lines by
which his elbows had been imperfectly secured, while speaking and
immediately lashed the body of the black to his own, though his words
received no interruption from a process that was executed with all a
seaman's dexterity. "Where was the man in your lubberly crew that could
lay upon a yard with this here black, or haul upon a lee-earing, while he
held the weather-line? Could any one of ye all give up his rations, in
order that a sick messmate might fare the better? or work a double tide,
to spare the weak arm of a friend? Show me one who had as little dodge
under fire, as a sound mainmast, and I will show you all that is left of
his better. And now sway upon your whip, and thank God that the honest end
goes up, while the rogues are suffered to keep their footing for a time."

"Sway away!" echoed Nightingale, seconding the hoarse sounds of his voice
by the winding of his call; "away with them to heaven."

"Hold!" exclaimed the chaplain, happily arresting the cord before it had
yet done its fatal office. "For His sake, whose mercy may one day be
needed by the most hardened of ye all, give but another moment of time!
What mean these words! read I aright? 'Ark, of Lynnhaven!'"

"Ay, ay," said Richard, loosening the rope a little, in order to speak
with greater freedom, and transferring the last morsel of the weed from
his box to his mouth, as he answered; "seeing you are an apt scholar, no
wonder you make it out so easily, though written by a hand that was always
better with a marling-spike than a quill."

"But whence came the words? and why do you bear those names, thus written
indelibly in the skin? Patience, men! monsters! demons! Would ye deprive
the dying man of even a minute of that precious time which becomes so dear
to all, as life is leaving us?"

"Give yet another minute!" said a deep voice from behind.

"Whence come the words, I ask?" again the chaplain demanded.

"They are neither more nor less than the manner in which a circumstance
was logged, which is now of no consequence, seeing that the cruise is
nearly up with all who are chiefly concerned. The black spoke of the
collar; but, then, he thought I might be staying in port, while he was
drifting between heaven and earth, in search of his last moorings."

"Is there aught, here, that I should know?" inte