men, but his age and experience,
his long association with the captain, as well as some almost
incredible tales of his familiar companionship with certain men of
awe-inspiring name and great renown, with various mighty feats of arms
in recent campaigns, vaguely current, conduced to make him the monarch
of the forecastle, and the arbiter of the various discussions and
arguments among the men, who rarely ventured to dispute the dictum of
their oracle.

"Well, here we are pointing out again, thank the Lord!" he said to his
particular friend and crony among the crew, the carpenter, Richard
Spicer, a battered old shell-back, like himself. "There is only one
place from which I like to see the land, Richard!"

"And where is that, bosun?"

"Over the stern, as now, mate, when we 're going free with a fair wind,
and leaving it fast behind. I feel safer then. A time since and I
felt as if I never wanted to see it again from any place. To think of
me, a decent God-fearing, seafaring man, at my time of life, turning
soldier!" It is not in the power of written language to express the
peculiar intonation of contempt which the old man laid upon that
inoffensive word, "soldier." No one venturing to interrupt him, after
staring at his particular aversion for a few moments, he went on more
mildly, and in a reflective tone,--

"Not but what I have seen some decent soldiers--a few. There was old
Blodgett, and young Mr. Talbot, ay, and General Washington too! Now
there 's a man for you, ship-mates. Lord, what a sailorman he would
have made! They tell me he had a midshipman's warrant offered him when
he was a lad once, and actually refused it--refused it! preferred to be
a soldier, and what a chance he lost! Might have been an admiral by
now!"

"I 've heard tell as how 't was his mother that prevented him from
goin' to sea--when he was ready an' willin' an' waitin' to get aboard,"
returned one of the men.

"May be, may be. The result's the same. You never can tell what
women, and 'specially mothers, will do. They 're necessary, of course,
leastways it's generally believed we all had 'em, though I remember
none myself, nor Captain Seymour neither, and he 's a pretty good sort
of a man--let alone me--but they've no place aboard ship. Now look
what this one did,--spoiled a man that had the makin's of a first-class
sailor in him, and turned him into a soldier!"

"But where would we be in this country of ours now, bosun, i