he "Take of a Right Whale in Behring's Sea by the Good Adventure
Barque out of New Bedford;" the other, the "Landing of H. M. Troops in
Boston, His Majesty's Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England,
1766." In the latter picture, the vanes on the town steeples and the
ships in the bay were represented very big, and the town itself very
small; and the dull black and white of the wood-cut was relieved by
one long stream of red, which was H. M. troops landing and marching up
the Long Wharf, and by several splotches of the same, where the troops
were standing, drawn up in line, upon each frigate, and waiting to be
ferried.

A quiet little place the office would have seemed to us; and yet there
was not a sea on earth, probably, that did not bear its bounding ship
sent out from that small office. And if it was still, in there, it had
a cosmopolitan, aromatic smell; for every strange letter or foreign
sample with which the place was littered bespoke the business of the
bright, blue world outside. From the street below came noise enough,
and loud voices of sailors and shipmen in many a foreign tongue. For
in those days we had freedom of the sea and dealings with the world,
and had not yet been taught to cabin all our energies within the
spindle-rooms of cotton-mills. As Mr. James looked out of the window
he saw a full-rigged ship, whose generous lines and clipper rig
bespoke the long-voyage liner, warping slowly up toward the dock, her
fair white lower sails, still wet from the sea, hanging at the yards,
the stiff salt sparkling in the sunlight.

Mr. James Bowdoin was already standing at the pier-head (for it was
indeed their ship of which McMurtagh had been speaking), and Mr. James
made bold to turn the key upon the counting-room and go to join his
father. Here he was standing, side by side with him, swaying his body,
with his thumbs in his waistcoat pocket, in some unconscious
imitation of ownership, when his father caught sight of him and
ordered him sharply back. "Yes, sir," said Mr. James, and moved to the
other angle of the wharf, for he had caught the word "pirates;" and
now, for some reason, the ship had cast her anchor, a hundred yards
outside the dock, while to it from her side a double-manned yawl was
rowing. And amid the blue jackets, above a dark mass of men that
seemed to be bound together by an iron chain, was some strange
rippling of long yellow hair, that the young man had been first to
see. Yet not quite