ned among the men, broke out in a simultaneous and common shout.
In an instant, every symptom of lethargy disappeared in a general and
extraordinary activity. The young and nimble topmen bounded like leaping
animals, into the rigging of their respective masts, and were seen
ascending the shaking ladders of ropes as so many squirrels would hasten
to their holes at the signal of alarm. The graver and heavier seamen of
the forecastle, the still more important quarter-gunners and
quarter-masters, the less instructed and half-startled waisters, and the
raw and actually alarmed after-guard, all hurried, by a sort of instinct,
to their several points; the more practised to plot mischief against their
shipmates, and the less intelligent to concert their means of defence.

In an instant, the tops and yards were ringing with laughter and
loudly-uttered jokes, as each exulting mariner aloft proclaimed his device
to his fellows, or urged his own inventions, at the expense of some less
ingenious mode of annoyance. On the other hand, the distrustful and often
repeated glances that were thrown upward, from the men who had clustered
on the quarter-deck and around the foot of the mainmast sufficiently
proclaimed the diffidence with which the novices on deck were about to
enter into the contest of practical wit that was about to commence. The
steady and more earnest seamen forward, however, maintained their places,
with a species of stern resolution which manifestly proved the reliance
they had on their physical force, and their long familiarity with all the
humours, no less than with the dangers, of the ocean.

There was another little cluster of men, who assembled, in the midst of
the general clamour and confusion, with a haste and steadiness that
announced, at the same time, both a consciousness of the entire necessity
of unity on the present occasion, and habit of acting in concert. These
were the drilled and military dependants of the General, between whom,
and the less artificial seamen, there existed not only an antipathy that
might almost be called instinctive, but which, for obvious reasons had
been so strongly encouraged in the vessel of which we write, as often to
manifest itself in turbulent and nearly mutinous broils. About twenty in
number, they collected quickly; and, although obliged to dispense with
their fire-arms in such an amusement, there was a sternness, in the visage
of each of the whiskered worthies, that showed ho