hout a check or
tremor.

"I was waiting for the chance," said Davis to Herrick. "I needn't do the
same with you, because you understand it for yourself."

"Are you going to berth here?" asked Herrick, following the captain into
the state-room, where he began to adjust the chronometer in its place at
the bed-head.

"Not much!" replied he. "I guess I'll berth on deck. I don't know as I'm
afraid, but I've no immediate use for confluent small-pox."

"I don't know that I'm afraid either," said Herrick. "But the thought of
these two men sticks in my throat; that captain and mate dying here, one
opposite to the other. It's grim. I wonder what they said last?"

"Wiseman and Wishart?" said the captain. "Probably mighty small
potatoes. That's a thing a fellow figures out for himself one way, and
the real business goes quite another. Perhaps Wiseman said, 'Here, old
man, fetch up the gin, I'm feeling powerful rocky.' And perhaps Wishart
said, 'O, hell!'"

"Well, that's grim enough," said Herrick.

"And so it is," said Davis.--"There; there's that chronometer fixed. And
now it's about time to up anchor and clear out."

He lit a cigar and stepped on deck.

"Here, you! What's _your_ name?" he cried to one of the hands, a
lean-flanked, clean-built fellow from some far western island, and of a
darkness almost approaching to the African.

"Sally Day," replied the man.

"Devil it is," said the captain, "Didn't know we had ladies on
board.--Well, Sally, oblige me by hauling down that rag there. I'll do
the same for you another time." He watched the yellow bunting as it was
eased past the cross-trees and handed down on deck. "You'll float no
more on this ship," he observed. "Muster the people aft, Mr. Hay," he
added, speaking unnecessarily loud, "I've a word to say to them."

It was with a singular sensation that Herrick prepared for the first
time to address a crew. He thanked his stars indeed that they were
natives. But even natives, he reflected, might be critics too quick for
such a novice as himself; they might perceive some lapse from that
precise and cut-and-dry English which prevails on board a ship; it was
even possible they understood no other; and he racked his brain, and
overhauled his reminiscences of sea romance, for some appropriate words.

"Here, men! tumble aft!" he said. "Lively now! all hands aft!"

They crowded in the alleyway like sheep.

"Here they are, sir," said Herrick.

For some time the captai