me, after a most terrific gust, during
which every man held his breath to listen whether there might not be a
snapping of the spars, "well, Frank, what do you think of that?"

"Why, I think I never saw it blow so hard before," I replied. "'Tisn't
a very comfortable berth, this of ours, with a lee-shore not thirty
miles off, and a hurricane blowing."

"No danger at all, Frank, if them spars only stay by us--and I guess
they will. They're good sticks, and Mr. Brewster is too good a
boatswain not to have 'em well supported. The old Gentile is a
dreadful critter for eatin' to windward in any weather that God ever
sent; but I hope you don't call this blowin' hard, do you? Why, I've
seen it blow so that two men, one on each side of the skipper,
couldn't keep his hair on his head, and they had to get the cabin-boy
to tail on to the cue behind, and take a turn round a belaying-pin."

"An' that nothin' to a time I had in a brig off Hatteras," observed
Teddy, who had somewhat recovered his composure; "we had to cut away
both masts, you persave, and to scud under a scupper nail driv into
the deck, wid a man ready to drive it further as the wind freshened."

"Wasn't that the time, Teddy," asked another, "When that big sea
washed off the buttons on your jacket?"

"Faix, you may well say that; and a nigger we had on board turned
white by reason of the scare he was in."

"Wal, now," interposed Ichabod Green, "Teddy, that's a lie; it's agin
all reason."

"Pooh! you green-horn!" said Jack Reeves, "that's nothing to a yarn I
can spin. You see that when I was quite a boy, I was in a Dutch
man-o'-war for a year and thirteen months; and one day in the Indian
Ocean, it came on to blow like blazes. It blowed for three days and
nights, and the skipper called a council of officers to know what to
do. So, when they'd smoked up all their baccy, they concluded to
shorten sail, and the bo'sn came down to rouse out the crew. He
ondertook to whistle, but it made such an onnateral screech, that the
chaplain thought old Davy had come aboard; and he told the skipper he
guessed he'd take his trick at prayin'. 'Why,' says the skipper,
'we've got on well enough without, ever since we left the Hague,
hadn't we better omit it now?' ''Taint possible,' says the parson. Now
you all know you can't larn seamanship to a parson or passenger--and
the bloody fool knelt down with his face to wind'ard. 'Hillo!' says
the skipper, 'you'd better fill away, and com