rmentor, clapping his foot against the
companion, and taking the pull of a giant on the reef-tackle as he
spoke. "If you ever know'd where to look for the fag-ind of a
north-easter at this time o' year, it's more nor you ever larn'd me to
do, and that I do say wasn't doin' your honest duty by me. I'd lay a
pistreen this breeze would last the Washy, to the south'ard o' the
Tortugas, and well you know it too."

"Well, suppose it would, I can't help it--what would _you do_, Matthew?
It blows like thunder: I can't tell how fast she's going,--I don't want
to over-shoot the light, and then have to thrash back through such a
smother of a sea."

"Well, now I see what you're at; and it's all right, I guess," observed
Matthew, with affected deference of tone. "I know the varmint's pretty
slick, but I never should ha' thought of her crawling over ninety miles
in four hours:"--it was at this time about midnight. "You ask me what
I'd do; why now I'll tell you, if I was you, I'd say, Mat. here take the
stick,--it wouldn't be the first time,--and I'd crawl out o' that hole
and shake myself; and then I'd ask this gentleman for a cigar and a
mouthful of liquor, and then I'd clap a bit o' the square mainsail on
her, and lift the sloppy little slut out of it a yard or two; that's
what I'd do: and now what have you to say agin it, he?"

"You have a square mainsail in the craft, I suppose?" here inquired I,
by way of taking Matthew off the old man a little.

"Why, I don't know; maybe the old man has had it cut up to make
trousers: but there used to be one when I was in her, and such an
omni-po-tent tearer,--it had a hoist to heaven, it sheeted home to
h--ll, outspread the eternal universe, and would ha' dragged a frigate
seventeen knots through a sea o' treacle, by the living jingo! Why, I've
seen it afore now raise the leetle hooker clean out o' water, and tail
off, with her hanging on, like the boat to a balloon."

With the least possible sail we continued to slip along at a slapping
rate, and long before daylight made the light at the entrance of the
Savannah river: had our pilots known this bar as familiarly as they did
that of Charleston, we might have run in; as it was, we hove-to in a
very heavy sea for upwards of two hours, and the Washington behaved
under these circumstances to admiration; she lay-to like a sea-bird, now
floating buoyant upon the foamy crest of the great seas, then sliding
down their sides into the trough wher