was dashed upon the shore. The
vessel and cargo were lost, and it was with difficulty the crew were
saved.

Captain Tilton, however, was a good navigator. He had been a European
trader, understood and practised "lunar observations," and always knew
with sufficient accuracy the position of the brig.

Few things surprised me more on my first voyage to sea than the sudden
and mysterious manner in which the coverings of the head were spirited
away from the decks of the Dolphin. Hats, caps, and even the temporary
apologies for such articles of costume, were given unwittingly and most
unwillingly to the waves. A sudden flaw of wind, the flap of a sail, an
involuntary jerk of the head, often elicited an exclamation of anger or
a torrent of invectives from some unfortunate being who had been
cruelly rendered bareheaded, attended with a burst of laughter from
unsympathizing shipmates.

The inimitable Dickens, in his best production, says, with all the
shrewdness and point of a practical philosopher, "There are very few
moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous
distress, or meets with so little commiseration, as when he is in
pursuit of his own hat." But, unfortunately, on shipboard, if a man's
hat is taken off by the wind, he cannot chase it and recover it; nor is
it swept from his sight into the DEPTHS of the sea. On looking astern,
he will see it gracefully and sportively riding on the billows, as if
unconscious of any impropriety, reckless of the inconvenience which such
desertion may cause its rightful proprietor, and an object of wonder, it
may be, to the scaly inhabitants of old Neptune's dominions.

Before we reached Demarara every hat and cap belonging to the ship's
company, with a single exception, had been involuntarily given, as a
propitiatory offering, to the god of Ocean. This exception was a beaver
hat belonging to the captain; and this would have followed its leaders,
had it not been kept in a case hermetically sealed. After the captain's
stock of sea-going hats and caps had disappeared he wore around his
head a kerchief, twisted fancifully, like a turban. Others followed
his example, while some fashioned for themselves skullcaps of fantastic
shapes from pieces of old canvas; so that when we reached Demarara we
looked more like a ship's company of Mediterranean pirates than honest
Christians.

I became accustomed to a sea life, and each succeeding day brought with
it some novelty to