parlance, an "hermaphrodite
brig," of about one hundred and fifty tons burden; and had been engaged,
for some twelve or fifteen years, in the West India trade. This vessel
could not with propriety be regarded as a model of grace and beauty, but
gloried in bluff bows, a flat bottom, and a high quarter-deck; carried
a large cargo for her tonnage, and moved heavily and reluctantly through
the water.

On this particular voyage, the hold of the brig, as I have already
stated, was filled with lumber; and thirty-five thousand feet of the
same article were carried on deck, together with an indefinite quantity
of staves, shooks, hoop poles, and other articles of commerce too
numerous to mention. On this enormous deck-load were constructed, on
each side, a row of sheep-pens, sufficiently spacious to furnish with
comfortable quarters some sixty or seventy sheep; and on the pens,
ranged along in beautiful confusion, was an imposing display of
hen-coops and turkey-coops, the interstices being ingeniously filled
with bundles of hay and chunks of firewood. The quarter-deck was
"lumbered up" with hogsheads of water, and casks of oats and barley, and
hen-coops without number.

With such a deck-load, not an unusually large one in those days, the
leading trucks attached to the fore-rigging were about half way between
the main deck and the foretop. It was a work of difficulty and danger to
descend from the deck-load to the forecastle; but to reach the foretop
required only a hop, skip, and a jump. The locomotive qualities of this
craft, misnamed the Dolphin, were little superior to those of a well
constructed raft; and with a fresh breeze on the quarter, in spite of
the skill of the best helmsman, her wake was as crooked as that of the
"wounded snake," referred to by the poet, which "dragged its slow length
along."

It was in the early part of July, in the year 1809, that the brig
Dolphin left Portsmouth, bound on a voyage to Dutch Guiana, which at
that time, in consequence of the malignant fevers that prevailed on the
coast, was not inaptly termed "the grave of American seamen." The crew
consisted of the captain and mate, five sailors, a green hand to act as
cook, and a cabin boy. There was also a passenger on board, a young man
named Chadwick, who had been residing in Portsmouth, and was going to
Demarara, in the hope which fortunately for him was not realized of
establishing himself in a mercantile house.

The forecastle being, fo