liances were left in their
ordinary positions, Jack saw little reason to derange himself; and as
reports were brought below, from time to time, respecting the approach
of the enemy, and more especially of his being well to leeward, few of
those whose duty did not call them on deck troubled themselves about the
matter at all. This habit of considering his fortune as attached to that
of his ship, and of regarding himself as a point on her mass, as we all
look on ourselves as particles of the orb we accompany in its
revolutions, is sufficiently general among mariners; but it was
particularly so as respects the sailors of a fleet, who were kept so
much at sea, and who had been so often, with all sorts of results, in
the presence of the enemy. The scene that was passing in the gun-room at
the precise moment at which our tale has arrived, was so characteristic,
in particular, as to merit a brief description.

All the idlers by this time were out of their berths and cotts; the
signs of those who "slept in the country," as it is termed, or who were
obliged, for want of state-rooms, to sling in the common apartment,
having disappeared. Magrath was reading a treatise on medicine, in good
Leyden Latin, by a lamp. The purser was endeavouring to decipher his
steward's hieroglyphics, favoured by the same light, and the captain of
marines was examining the lock of an aged musket. The third and fourth
lieutenants were helping each other to untangle one of their
Bay-of-Biscay reckonings, which had set both plane and spherical
trigonometry at defiance, by a lamp of their own; and the chaplain was
hurrying the steward and the boys along with the breakfast--his usual
occupation at that "witching time" in the morning.

While things were in this state, the first lieutenant, Mr. Bury,
appeared in the gun-room. His arrival caused one or two of the mess to
glance upward at him, though no one spoke but the junior lieutenant,
who, being an honourable, was at his ease with every one on board, short
of the captain.

"What's the news from deck, Bury?" asked this officer, a youth of
twenty, his senior being a man ten years older. "Is Mr. de Vervillin
thinking of running away yet?"

"Not he, sir; there's too much of the game-cock about him for _that_."

"I'll warrant you he can _crow_! But what _is_ the news, Bury?"

"The news is that the old Planter is as wet as a wash-tub, forward, and
I must have a dry jacket--do you hear, there, Tom? Soundin