ck, growling. The prevailing odours of the neighbourhood
were tar, oil, fish, and marine-stores. The sea-captain's room partook
largely of the same odours, and was crowded with more than an average
share of the stores. It was a particularly small room, with charts,
telescopes, speaking-trumpets, log-lines, sextants, portraits of ships,
sou'-westers, oil-cloth coats and leggings on the walls; model ships
suspended from the beams overhead; sea-boots, coils of rope, kegs, and
handspikes on the floor; and great shells, earthenware ornaments,
pagodas, and Chinese idols on the mantel-piece. In one corner stood a
child's crib. The hammock swung across the room like a heavy cloud
about to descend and overwhelm the whole. This simile was further borne
out by the dense volumes of tobacco smoke in which the captain enveloped
himself, and through which his red visage loomed over the edge of the
hammock like a lurid setting sun.

For a few minutes the clouds continued to multiply and thicken. No
sound broke the calm that prevailed, save a stertorous breathing, with
an occasional hitch in it. Suddenly there was a convulsion in the
clouds, and one of the hitches developed into a tremendous cough. There
was something almost awe-inspiring in the cough. The captain was a huge
and rugged man. His cough was a terrible compound of a choke, a gasp, a
rend, and a roar. Only lungs of sole-leather could have weathered it.
Each paroxysm suggested the idea that the man's vitals were being torn
asunder; but not content with that, the exasperated mariner made matters
worse by keeping up a continual growl of indignant remonstrance in a
thunderous undertone.

"Hah! that _was_ a splitter. A few more hug--sh! ha! like that will
burst the biler entirety. Polly--hallo!"

The lurid sun appeared to listen for a moment, then opening its mouth it
shouted, "Polly--ahoy!" as if it were hailing the maintop of a
seventy-four.

Immediately there was a slight movement in one corner of the room, and
straightway from out a mass of marine-stores there emerged a fairy! At
least, the little girl, of twelve or thereabouts, who suddenly appeared,
with rich brown tumbling hair, pretty blue eyes, faultless figure, and
ineffable sweetness in every lineament of her little face, might easily
have passed for a fairy or an angel.

"What! caught you napping?" growled the captain in the midst of a
paroxysm.

"Only a minute, father; I couldn't help it," repli