hem instantly as those given forth
by a sailing ship sweeping at a high speed through the water, and I
sprang forward clear of the mainmast to where the stowed foresail
permitted me a clear and uninterrupted view to leeward. The next
instant three dreadful cries in quick succession--exactly reproducing,
tone for tone, those terrifying sounds that had so startled and unnerved
me only a few hours earlier--burst from my lips; for there, almost
within reach of my hand, was the black, towering mass of the hull and
canvas of a large ship bearing straight down upon the longboat, and
aiming accurately to strike her fair amidships. So close was she that
her long slender jib-boom, with the swelling jibs soaring high among the
stars, was already over my head, the phosphorescent boil and smother
from the plunge of her keen bows already foamed to the gunwale of the
longboat. A startled shout rang out upon the heavy night air from
somebody upon her forecastle in response to those weird cries of mine,
and above the hissing wash and gurgle of the water under her bows I
caught the sound of naked feet padding upon her deck-planking, as the
rudely awakened look-out sprang to peer over the topgallant rail. But
before the man could reach the spot for which he sprang the ship was
upon me, and as her cutwater crashed into the frail hull of the boat,
rending it asunder and flinging the two halves violently apart to roll
bottom upward on either side of the swelling bows, I leapt desperately
upward at the chain bobstay, caught it, shinned nimbly up it to the
bowsprit, and made my breathless way inboard, to the terror and
astonishment of some twenty forecastle hands who had evidently been
startled out of a sound sleep by the sudden outcries and commotion under
the bows, and into the midst of whom I unceremoniously tumbled.

The excited jabber which instantly arose among my new shipmates at once
apprised me that I was aboard a vessel manned by Frenchmen. A single
quick glance aloft sufficed to inform me that she was barque-rigged, and
probably of about three hundred and fifty tons measurement. The excited
and astonished watch crowded round me, regarding me curiously--and,
methought, with looks not wholly devoid of suspicion. They were, one
and all, beginning to deluge me with questions, when an authoritative
voice from the poop broke in with a demand to be informed what all the
disturbance on the forecastle was about. Whereupon an individua