n posted on the forecastle for his vast
strength, cast an eye upward, and, with both arms thrust into his bosom,
he rolled along the deck, with just as serious a mien as though he had
been sent on a duty of the greatest import. The uproar over his head had
drawn a most helpless-looking mortal from a retired corner of the
birth-deck, to the ladder of the forward hatch, where, with a body half
above the combings, a skein of strong coarse thread around his neck, a
piece of bees-wax in one hand, and a needle in the other, he stood staring
about him, with just that sort of bewildered air that a Chinese mandarin
would manifest, were he to be suddenly initiated in the mysteries of the
ballet. On this object the eye of Scipio fell. Stretching out an arm, he
cast him upon his shoulder; and, before the startled subject of his attack
knew into whose hands he had fallen, a hook was passed beneath the
waistband of his trowsers, and he was half way between the water and the
spar, on his way to join the considerate Fid.

"Have a care lest you let the man fall into the sea!" cried Wilder
sternly, from his stand on the distant poop.

"He'm tailor, masser Harry," returned the black, without altering a
muscle; "if a clothes no 'trong, he nobody blame but heself."

During this brief parlance, the good-man Homespun had safely arrived at
the termination of his lofty flight. Here he was suitably received by Fid,
who raised him to his side; and, having placed him comfortably between the
yard and the boom, he proceeded to secure him by a lashing that would give
the tailor the proper disposition of his hands.

"Bouse a bit on this waister!" called Richard, when he had properly
secured the good-man; "so; belay all that."

He then put one foot on the neck of his prisoner, and, seizing his lower
member as it swung uppermost, he coolly placed it in the lap of the
awe-struck tailor.

"There, friend," he said, "handle your needle and palm now, as if you
were at job-work. Your knowing handicraft always begins with the
foundation wherein he makes sure that his upper gear will stand."

"The Lord protect me, and all other sinful mortals, from an untimely end!"
exclaimed Homespun, gazing at the vacant view from his giddy elevation,
with a sensation a little resembling that with which the aeronaut, in his
first experiment, regards the prospect beneath.

"Settle away this waister," again called Fid; "he interrupts rational
conversation by his noise;