a.

We had a quiet run of it, after that, into port, where we lay about a
couple of months or so, trading off for a fair stock of palm-oil, ivory,
and hides. The days were hot and purple and still. We hadn't what you
might call a blow, if I recollect accurate, till we rounded the Cape
again, heading for home.

We were rounding that Cape again, heading for home, when that happened
which you may believe me or not, as you take the notion, Tom; though why
a man who can swallow Daniel and the lion's den, or take down t'other
chap who lived three days comfortable into the inside of a whale, should
make faces at what I've got to tell I can't see.

It was just about the spot that we lost the boy that we fell upon the
worst gale of the trip. It struck us quite sudden. Whitmarsh was a
little high. He wasn't apt to be drunk in a gale, if it gave him warning
sufficient.

Well, you see, there must be somebody to furl the main-royal again, and
he pitched onto McCallum. McCallum hadn't his beat for fighting out the
royal in a blow.

So he piled away lively, up to the to'-sail yard. There, all of a
sudden, he stopped. Next we knew he was down like heat-lightning.

His face had gone very white.

"What's to pay with _you_?" roared Whitmarsh.

Said McCallum, "_There's somebody up there, sir_."

Screamed Whitmarsh, "You're gone an idiot!"

Said McCallum, very quiet and distinct: "There's somebody up there, sir.
I saw him quite plain. He saw me. I called up. He called down. Says he,
_'Don't you come up_!' and hang me if I'll stir a step for you or any
other man to-night!"

I never saw the face of any man alive go the turn that mate's face went.
If he wouldn't have relished knocking the Scotchman dead before his
eyes, I've lost my guess. Can't say what he would have done to the old
fellow, if there'd been any time to lose.

He'd the sense left to see there wasn't overmuch, so he orders out Bob
Smart direct.

Bob goes up steady, with a quid in his cheek and a cool eye. Half-way
amid to'-sail and to'-gallant he stops, and down he comes, spinning.

"Be drowned if there ain't!" said he. "He's sitting square upon the
yard. I never see the boy Kentucky, if he isn't sitting on that yard.
'_Don't you come up!_' he cries out,--'_don't you come up!_'"

"Bob's drunk, and McCallum's a fool!" said Jim Welch, standing by. So
Welch wolunteers up, and takes Jaloffe with him. They were a couple of
the coolest hands aboard,--Welch and Jalof