ich--they didn't
know no better."

"But four anchors out of the starn," continued the man-of-war's man,
"why, d--it, the very first sea would onhung the rudder, if she was
pitching into it, and knock the whole thunderin' starn-frame into
_smithareens_ in a quarter less no time."

"Now you see," said one of the audience, "I've a notion that the craft
in them days was built with goose starns, like a Dutch galliot."

"May be," said another, "she had all her anchors stowed aft, to bring
her down by the starn."

"But four anchors out of the starn!" murmured the still perplexed Tom
Pipes, "I wonder what old Lord Howe, or Admiral Duncan, would have said,
if they'd heard a first leftenant give out such orders in a gale of
wind."

"Why, there couldn't have been no sailors aboard the hooker, or they
would have let go one anchor first, and if that didn't bring her up,
then another, and so on; but letting all four anchors go at once right
under foot, is what I call a d--d lubberly piece of business, let who
will do it, whether St. Paul or St. Devil, and I don't believe they
could get insurance on the craft in any insurance office in the United
States."

"Yes they could, and I'll tell you why; if a ship goes ashore with an
anchor on her bows, the owners can't recover no insurance; but if the
skipper will swear that all his anchors were down, and good cables
clinched to 'em, he can get his insurance."

"Yes, but there's a thunderin' sight of odds betwixt letting go your
anchors in a ship-shape, sea-man-like manner, and bundling 'em all
overboard at once in such a lubberly way as that you was readin' about."

The reading proceeded, leaving the law question respecting insurance
"open for discussion" at some more appropriate season. Much indignation
was expressed by the round-jacketed audience at the thirty-second
verse: "Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her
fall off." A vast deal of satire was expended upon "the thunderin'
troops," of all classes, periods, and nations, the whole clinched and
concluded by a remark from the boatswain:

"Aye, sojers, and pigs, and women, is always in the way, or else always
in mischief, aboard a ship, more 'specially in bad weather."

The reading afterwards progressed without much interruption, except at
the fortieth verse: "They--hoised up the mainsail to the wind, and made
toward shore," and then only to remark, "Aye, she was a schooner, or
else a morfredite brig, an