etcher got tired of his vagaries, and left us at Pernambuco, to ship
aboard a homeward-bound whaler, and in his place we got a fellow named
Tubbs, a regular duff-head,--couldn't keep his eyes open in the daytime,
hardly.

"Well,--we were about two days out of Pernambuco, and Tubbs had the
middle watch, of a clear starlight night, with a steady breeze, and
everything going quietly, and nothing in sight. So, in about ten minutes
after the watch got on deck, every mother's son of them was hard and
fast. The wind was a-beam, and the old schooner could steer herself; so,
even the man at the helm was sitting down on a hencoop, with one arm
round the tiller, and snoring like a porpoise. I heard the old man rouse
out of his bunk and creep on deck, and, guessing fun was coming, I
turned out and slipped up after him. The first thing I saw was old Eaton
at work at the tiller. He got it unshipped and braced up with a pair of
oars and a hencoop, without waking the man at the helm,--how, I couldn't
tell,--but he was just like a cat; and then he blew the binnacle-light
out; and then he started forrard, with his trumpet in his hand. He
caught sight of me, standing halfway up the companion-way, and shook his
fist at me to keep quiet and not to spoil sport. He slipped forward and
out on to the bowsprit, clear out to the end of the flying-jib-boom, and
stowed himself where he couldn't be well seen to leeward of the sail.
Then he sung out with all his might through the trumpet, '_Schooner
ahoy, there! Port your hellum!--port_ H-A-A-A-RD! I say,--you're right
aboard of us!'--And then he'd drop the trumpet, and sing out as if in
the other craft to his own crew, and then again to us. Of course, every
man was on his feet in a second, thinking we were all but afoul of
another vessel. The man who was steering was trying, with all his might,
to put his helm a-port,--and when he found what was to pay there, to
ship the tiller. This wasn't so easy; for the old man had passed the
slack of the main-sheet through the head of the rudder, and belayed it
on one of the boom-cleats, out of reach,--and, what with just waking up,
and half a dozen contradictory orders sung out at once, besides
expecting to strike every minute, he had almost lost what little wits he
had.

"As for Tubbs, he was like a hen with her head cut off,--one minute at
the lee rail, and the next in the weather-rigging, then forrard to look
out for the strange craft, and then aft to see