cent-sized brig enough, and handy to manage when she had
plenty of sea-room, and a wind right aft; but on a bowline, or when the
wind was on the quarter, and there was a bit of a sea on, she kept such
a stiff weather-helm, and was such a downright cranky vessel, never
bending down to a breeze or lifting to the swell, that it was no wonder
that as soon as the hands got used to her ways, and tumbled to her
contrary points--and she was that contrary sometimes as to remind you of
a woman's temper on washing days, most ladies then being not
particularly pleasant, and feeling more inclined to drive a man mad,
rather than to coax and wheedle him--as soon as we all got used to her
ways, I say, we christened her the `_Cranky Jane_,' and that she was
more or less, barring when she had a fair wind, with an easy sea and
everything agreeable for her, as I said before.

"Old Cap'en Jiggins, however, wasn't of our way of thinking.

"He was the part owner as well as master of the vessel; and loved the
old brig--the `Janey' he called her, the old fool!--like the very apple
of his eye, always praising her up to the nines and not allowing anybody
to say a word against her sea-going qualities.

"Sometimes, when the man at the wheel would be swearing at the lubberly
craft in a silent way, so that you could see he was suffocating himself
with passion and ready to burst himself, for the way in which she would
fall off, or bowse up into the wind's eye, and try to go her own way,
like a horse that gets the bit between his teeth and sets his ears back,
then you'd hear old Jiggins a-talking to himself about the blessed old
tub.

"`That's it, my beauty! Look how she rides, the darling, like a duck!
What a clipper she is, to be sure; so easy to handle! a child could
steer her with a piece of thread!'

"When, p'raps it took all one man's strength, and perhaps two, to bring
up the beast a single point to the wind!

"In spite of Cap'en Jiggins' praise, I never sailed in such an out-and-
out obstinate craft as that identical _Cranky Jane_. She seemed to have
been laid down on the lines and constructed, plank by plank, especially
to spile a man's temper! Somehow or other, with the very lightest of
breezes--except, as I've said before, we had the wind right dead aft--we
could never get her to lay to her course and keep it. She was always
falling off and breaking away in every way but the right one, and
wanting to go just in the very opposite di