nd
hearty and jolly amongst the men, without the least trace of having
been, apparently, at his last gasp but an hour or so before.

He was half lying down, half sitting on the edge of one of the bunks,
nursing the big stray tortoise-shell tom-cat which had shared his
lodgings in the forepeak, and he had mistaken it for a rat as it crept
up and down the chain-pipe to see what it could pick up in the cook's
galley at meal-times, which it seemed to know by some peculiar instinct
of its own; and although thus partially partial to Ching Wang's society,
the cat now appeared to have taken even a greater fancy to his bed-
fellow in his hiding-place below than it had done to the cook, looking
upon the stowaway evidently as a fellow-comrade, who was unfortunately
in similar circumstances to himself.

Joe Fergusson not only looked all right, but he likewise was in the best
of spirits, possibly from the tot of rum Tim Rooney had given him after
his soup, to "pull him together," as the boatswain said; for, ere I left
the precincts of the forecastle he volunteered to sing a song, and as I
made my way aft I heard the beginning of some plaintive ditty concerning
a "may-i-den of Manches-teer," followed by a rousing chorus from the
crew, which had little or nothing to do with the main burden of the
ballad, the men's refrain being only a "Yo, heave ho, it's time for us
to go!"

A hint which I took.

The wind did not freshen quite so soon as either Mr Mackay or the
captain expected; but it continued to blow pretty steadily from the
north-west with considerable force, the ship bending over to it as it
caught her abaft the beam, and bowling along before it over the billowy
ocean like a prancing courser galloping over a race-course, tossing her
bows up in the air one moment and plunging them down the next, and
spinning along at a rare rate through the crested foam.

As it got later, though, the gale increased; and shortly after "two
bells in the first watch," nine o'clock that is in landsman's time,
Captain Gillespie, who was on deck again, gave the order to shorten
sail.

"Stand by your topgallant halliards!" cried Mr Mackay, giving the
necessary instructions for the captain's order to be carried into
effect, following this command up immediately by a second--"Let go!"

Then, the clewlines and buntlines were manned, and in a trice the three
topgallants were hanging in festooned folds from the upper yards, I
doing my first bit of se