titudes, on my last
voyage but three. I was in a Bristol ship a-carryin' of slaves from
Guinea to the plantations. Storms!--I never seed such storms nowhere; and
contrariwise, calms enough to make a Quaker sick. In course the water was
short, an' scurvy come aboard, an' 'twas a hammock an' round shot for one
or the other of us every livin' day. As reg'lar as the mornin' watch the
sharks came for their breakfast; we could see 'em comin' from all p'ints
o' the compass; an' sure as seven bells struck there they was, ten deep,
with jaws wide open, like Parmiter's there when there's a go of grog to
be sarved out. We was all like the livin' skellington at Bartlemy Fair,
and our teeth droppin' out that fast, they pattered like hailstones on
the deck."

"How did you stick 'em in again?" interrupted Parmiter, anxious to get
even with Bulger for the allusion to his gaping jaw. He was a thick set,
ugly fellow, his face seamed with scars, his mouth twisted, his ears
dragged at the lobes by heavy brass rings.

"With glue made out of albacores we caught, to be sure. Well, as I was
saying, we was so weak there wasn't a man aboard could reach the maintop,
an' the man at the wheel had two men to hold him up. Things was so, thus,
an' in such case, when, about eight hells one arternoon, the lookout at
the masthead--"

"Thought you couldn't climb? How'd he get there?" said the same skeptic.

"Give me time, Parmiter, and you'll know all about the hows an' whys,
notwithstandin's and sobeits. He'd been there for a week, for why? 'cos
he couldn't get down. We passed him up a quarter pint o' water and a
biscuit or two every day by a halyard.

"Well, as I was sayin', all at once the lookout calls out, 'Land
ho!'--leastways he croaked it, 'cos what with weakness and little water
our throats was as dry as last year's biscuit.

"'Where away?' croaks first mate, which I remember his name was Tonking.

"And there, sure enough, we seed a small island, which it might be a
quarter-mile long. Now, mind you, we hadn't made a knot for three weeks.
How did that island come there so sudden like? In course, it must ha'
come up from the bottom o' the sea. And as we was a-lookin' at it we saw
it grow, mateys--long spits o' land shootin' out this side, that side,
and t'other side--and the whole concarn begins to move towards us, comin'
on, hand over hand, slow, dead slow, but sure and steady. Our jaws were
just a-droppin' arter our teeth when fust mate