ever so hearty--I sort of
glanced around and took a realizing sense of my mate's saucer eyes--and
then says the governor, 'Plant yourself, Tom, plant yourself; you can't
cat your anchor again till you've had a feed with me and the ladies!' I
planted myself alongside the governor, and canted my eye around toward
my mate. Well, sir, his dead-lights were bugged out like tompions; and
his mouth stood that wide open that you could have laid a ham in it
without him noticing it."

There was great applause at the conclusion of the old captain's story;
then, after a moment's silence, a grave, pale young man said:

"Had you ever met the governor before?"

The old captain looked steadily at this inquirer awhile, and then got
up and walked aft without making any reply. One passenger after another
stole a furtive glance at the inquirer; but failed to make him out, and
so gave him up. It took some little work to get the talk-machinery
to running smoothly again after this derangement; but at length a
conversation sprang up about that important and jealously guarded
instrument, a ship's timekeeper, its exceeding delicate accuracy, and
the wreck and destruction that have sometimes resulted from its varying
a few seemingly trifling moments from the true time; then, in due
course, my comrade, the Reverend, got off on a yarn, with a fair
wind and everything drawing. It was a true story, too--about Captain
Rounceville's shipwreck--true in every detail. It was to this effect:

Captain Rounceville's vessel was lost in mid-Atlantic, and likewise his
wife and his two little children. Captain Rounceville and seven seamen
escaped with life, but with little else. A small, rudely constructed
raft was to be their home for eight days. They had neither provisions
nor water. They had scarcely any clothing; no one had a coat but the
captain. This coat was changing hands all the time, for the weather was
very cold. Whenever a man became exhausted with the cold, they put the
coat on him and laid him down between two shipmates until the garment
and their bodies had warmed life into him again. Among the sailors was a
Portuguese who knew no English. He seemed to have no thought of his own
calamity, but was concerned only about the captain's bitter loss of wife
and children. By day he would look his dumb compassion in the captain's
face; and by night, in the darkness and the driving spray and rain, he
would seek out the captain and try to comfort him with