y rising
out of blue water unsupported by any ship beneath;--it seemed an age to
him, he said, before there was any forecastle to be seen rising from the
brine. Also, how, caught off that same wild cape, they had to make sail
in a reef-topsail-breeze to claw off its terrible rocks, seen but too
plainly under their Ice. How, as he said, "about four in the afternoon
it seemed to blow worse than ever, and you could see the staunch boat
was pressed down under her canvas, and every spar was groaning and
quivering, while the ship went bodily to leeward." And next, "how she
seemed to come to herself, as it were, with a long staggering roll, and
to spring to windward as if relieved of a dead weight; for the gale had
broken, and the foam-belt along the cliffs grew dimmer and dimmer, and
the land fainter and fainter. And then," he said, "to hear the
fo'castle-talk, you would have said that never was such a ship, such
spars, such a captain, such seamanship, and such luck, since Father
Jason cleared the 'Argo' from the Piraeus, for Colchis and a market."

Or I might tell you how Dr. ----, the ship-surgeon, was in that Collard
steamer which ran down the fishing-boat in the fog off Cape Race,--and
how, looking from his state-room window, he saw a mighty cliff so near
that he could almost lay his hand upon it. How Fanshaw was on board the
"Sea-King" when she was burned, off Point Linus,--and how he hung in the
chains till he was taken off, and his hair was repeatedly set on fire by
the women--emigrant-passengers--jumping over his head into the sea.

But not so near a-shaking hands with Death did any of them tell, as Ned
Kennedy,--who, poor fellow, lies buried in some lone _canon_ of the
Sierra Madre. Let us hear him give it in his wild, reckless way. Ned was
sitting opposite us, his thick, black hair curling from under his plaid
travelling-cap,--his thick eyebrows working, and his hands occupied in
arranging little fragments of pilot-biscuit on the table. He broke in
upon the last man who was talking, with a--

"Tell you what, boys,--I've a better idea of what all that means. I
suppose you both know what the Mediterranean lines of steamers are, and
what capital seamanship, and travelling comfort, and all that, you find
there. The engineers, however, are Scotch, English, or American, always;
because why? A French officer once told me the reason. 'You see, _mon
ami_,' he said, 'this row of handles which are used to turn these
differen