ll that ends well, and the old barquey looks
first rate, as you say, sir, in spite of all she's gone through. She
rides like a cork."

She certainly was a capital seaboat and lay-to now as easily as if she
were at anchor in the Mersey, though the wind was whistling through the
rigging and the ocean far and wide white with foam, bowing and scraping
to the big waves that rolled in after her like an old dowager duchess in
a ball room, curtseying to her partner.

During the long time the first mate and I had been down below in the
stoke-hold, the skipper had lowered the upper yards and housed her top-
masts, getting her also under snugger canvas, the fore and mizzen
topsails being set "scandalised," as we call it aboard ship, that is,
with the heads of the sails hauled up, and their sheets flattened taut
as boards, so as to expose as little surface as possible to the wind,
only just sufficient to keep the vessel with her head to sea, like a
stag at bay.

Opportunity had also been taken, I noticed, to secure the broken engine-
room skylight in a more substantial way than formerly, and so prevent
any more green seas from flooding the hold, the opening having been
planked over by the carpenter, and heavy bars of railroad iron, which
formed part of our cargo, laid across, instead of the tarpaulin that was
deemed good enough before and had given way when Mr Stokes--poor man--
and the first mate and myself got washed down the hatchway by a wave
that came over the side, crumpling the flimsy covering as if it were
tissue paper.

Altogether, the outlook was more reassuring than when I had gone below;
for although a fierce northerly gale was howling over the deep, making
it heave and fret and lashing it up into wild mountainous billows, the
heaven overhead was clear of all cloud, and the complaisant moon, which
was at the full, but shining with a pale, peaceful light, while numerous
stars were twinkling everywhere in the endless expanse of the firmament
above, gazing down serenely at the riot of the elements below.

It was now close on midnight and Garry O'Neil came on deck to take the
middle watch, it being his turn of duty.

"Well, doctor," said the skipper, anxious to hear something about the
invalids, "how're your patients?"

"Both going on capitally; Jackson sleeping quietly, sir, though he can't
last out long, poor fellow!"

"And Mr Stokes?"

"Faith, he's drivin' his pigs to market in foine stoil; you should only
h