waggish quarter-gunners and quarter-masters, satisfied with
their own success, stimulated them to the enterprise; and Nightingale and
his mates, while they rolled their tongues into their cheeks, gave forth,
with their whistles, the cheering sound of "heave away!" The sight of
these adventurers, slowly and cautiously mounting the rigging, acted very
much, on the scattered topmen, in the manner that the appearance of so
many flies, in the immediate vicinity of a web, is known to act on their
concealed and rapacious enemies. The sailors aloft saw, by expressive
glances from them below, that a soldier was considered legal game. No
sooner, therefore, had the latter fairly entered into the toils, than
twenty topmen rushed out upon them, in order to make sure of their
prizes. In an incredibly short time, this important result was achieved.
Two or three of the aspiring adventurers were lashed where they had been
found, utterly unable to make any resistance in a spot where instinct
itself seemed to urge them to devote both hands to the necessary duty of
holding fast; while the rest were transferred, by the means of whips, to
different spars, very much as a light sail or a yard would have been
swayed into its place.

In the midst of the clamorous rejoicings that attended this success, one
individual made himself conspicuous for the gravity and business-like air
with which he performed his part of the comedy. Seated on the outer end of
a lower yard, with as much steadiness as though he had been placed on an
ottoman, he was intently occupied in examining into the condition of a
captive, who had been run up at his feet, with an order from the waggish
captain of the top, "to turn him in for a jewel-block;" a name that
appears to have been taken from the precious stones that are so often seen
pendant from the ears of the other sex.

"Ay, ay," muttered this deliberate and grave-looking tar, who was no other
than Richard Fid "the stropping you've sent with the fellow is none of the
best; and, if he squeaks so now, what will he do when you come to reeve a
rope through him! By the Lord, masters, you should have furnished the lad
a better outfit, if you meant to send him into good company aloft. Here
are more holes in his jacket than there are cabin windows to a Chinese
junk. Hilloa!--on deck there!--you Guinea, pick me up a tailor, and send
him aloft, to keep the wind out of this waister's tarpauling."

The athletic African, who had bee