dy sailors, and used to obey the word of command, men to be relied
upon in an emergency, rough in exterior, but within either soft as women
or hard as steel, according to the occasion.

Now it was that an observer not conversant with the "Sea Witch," and
looking at her from a distance, would have naturally concluded that she
was most appropriately named, for how else could her singular manouvres
and the result that followed be explained? Suddenly the mizzen royal
disappeared, followed by the top-gallant sail, topsail, and cross-jack
courses, seeming to melt away under the eye like a misty veil, while,
almost in a moment of time, there appeared a spanker, gaff topsail and
gaff top-gallantsail in their place, while the vessel still held on her
course.

A moment later, and the royal top-gallantsail, topsail and mainsail
disappear from the main mast, upon which appears a regular fore and aft
suit of canvass, consisting of mainsail, gaff topsail, and gaff
top-gallantsail, reducing the vessel to a square rig forward, and a
plain fore and aft rig aft. A few minutes more, and the foremast passed
through the same metamorphose, leaving the "Sea Witch" a three-masted
schooner, with fore and aft sails on every mast and every stay. All this
had been accomplished with a celerity that showed the crew to be no
strangers to the manouvres through which they had just passed, each man
requiring to work with marked intelligence. Fifty well drilled men,
thorough sea dogs, can turn a five hundred ton ship "inside out," if the
controlling mind understands his position on the quarter-deck.

"She wears that dress as though it suited her taste exactly, Mr.
Faulkner," said the captain, running his eye over the vessel, and
glancing over the side to mark her headway.

"Any rig becomes the 'Sea Witch,'" answered the officer, with evident
pride.

"That is true," returned the captain. "Luff, sir, luff a bit, so, well,"
he continued to the man at the helm; "we will have all of her weatherly
points that site will give."

"The wind is rather more unsteady than it was an hour past," said Mr.
Faulkner.

"Rather puffy, and twice I thought it would haul right about, but here
we have it still from the north'rd and east'rd," replied the captain.

"Here it is again," added the mate, as the wind hauled once more.

The immediate object of the change in the vessel's rig, which we have
described, was at once apparent, enabling the vessel to lie nearer the