ear him, cap'en!" answered the Irishman, looking out to windward.
"Begorrah, ain't it blowin', though, sir! Sure, as we used to say at
ould Trinity, _de gustibus non est disputandum_, which means, Mister
Spokeshave, as yo're cockin' up your nose to hear what I'm after sayin',
it's moighty gusty, an' there's no denyin' it!"

The skipper laughed, as he generally did at Garry's nonsensical, queer
sayings.

"By George, O'Neil! I must go down and have a glass of grog to wash the
taste of that awful pun out of my mouth!" he cried, turning to leave the
bridge for the first time since he had come up there at sunset. "You
can call me if anything happens or should it come to blow worse, but I
shall be up and down all night to see how you're getting on."

"Och! the divvle dout ye!" muttered the Irishman in his quizzing way, as
the skipper went down the ladder, giving a word to the boatswain and man
at the wheel below as he passed them on his way up. "Ye niver give a
chap the cridit of keeping a watch to himself!"

Soon after this I, too, left the deck and turned in, Garry O'Neil
telling me he did not want me on the bridge and that I had better sleep
while I could, a permission I readily availed myself of, tired out with
all I had gone through and the various exciting episodes of the evening.

There was no change in the weather the following morning, the wind even
blowing with greater force and the sea such as I had never seen it
before, and such a sea as I hope never to experience again; so, in order
that the ship might ride the more easily and those below in the engine-
room better able to go on with the repair of the cylinder than they
could with the old barquey pitching her bows under and then kicking up
her heels sky high, varying her performances by rolling side to side
violently, like a pendulum gone mad, the skipper had all our spare spars
lashed together, and attaching a stout steel wire hawser to them,
launched the lot overboard through a hole in the bulwarks, where one of
the waves had made a convenient clean sweep, veering the hawser ahead
with this "jetsam" to serve as a floating anchor for us, and moor the
ship.

By this means we all had a more comfortable time of it, the old barquey
no longer shipping water in any considerable quantity and there being
less work below in the way of clearing it, all of the bilge-pumps,
fortunately for us all, Stoddart and the engine-room staff were able to
keep going; otherwi