h longer than five times her beam. She was an old vessel, but
dry as a stale cheese; wallowed rather than rolled, yet was stiff;
would sit upright with erect spars, like the cocked ears of a horse,
in breezes which bowed passing vessels down to their wash-streaks. Her
round bows bruised the sea, and when it entered her head to take to
her heels, she would wash through it like a "gallied whale," all
smothered to the hawse-pipes, and a big round polished hump of brine
on either quarter.

We ambled, and wallowed, and blew, and in divers fashions drove along
till we were deep in the heart of the North Atlantic. It was then a
morning that brought the first of May within a biscuit-toss of our
reckoning of time: a very cold morning, the sea flat, green, and
greasy, with a streaking of white about it, as though it were a
flooring of marble; there was wind but no lift in the water; and
Salamon Sweers, in whose watch I was, said to me, when the day broke
and showed us the look of the ocean:

"Blowed," said he, "if a man mightn't swear that we were under the lee
of a range of high land."

It was very cold, the wind about north-west, the sky a pale grey, with
patches of weak hazy blue in it here and there; and here and there
again lay some darker shadow of cloud curled clean as though painted.
There was nothing in sight saving the topmost cloths of a little
barque heading eastwards away down to leeward. Quiet as the morning
was, not once during the passage had I found the temperature so cold.
I was glad when the job of washing down was over, and not a little
grateful for the hook-pot of steam tea which I took from the galley to
my quarters in the steerage.

I breakfasted in true ocean fashion, off ship's biscuit, a piece of
pork, the remains of yesterday's dinner, and a potful of black liquor
called tea, sweetened by molasses and thickened with sodden leaves and
fragments of twigs; and then, cutting a pipeful of tobacco from a
stick of cavendish, I climbed into my hammock, and lay there smoking
and trying to read in Norie's _Epitome_ until my pipe went out, on
which I fell asleep.

I was awakened by young Halsted, whose hand was upon the edge of my
hammock.

"Not time to turn out yet, I hope?" I exclaimed. "I don't feel to have
been below ten minutes."

"There's the finest sight to see on deck," said he, "that you're
likely to turn up this side of Boston. Tumble up and have a look if
only for five minutes"; and without an