and, as his gear is condemned by this here
tailor, why, you may turn him over to the purser for a new outfit."

The real motive, however, for getting rid of his pendant companion was a
twinkling of humanity, that still glimmered through the rough humour of
the tar, who well knew that his prisoner must hang where he did, at some
little expense of bodily ease. As soon as his request was complied with,
he turned to the good-man, to renew the discourse, with just as much
composure as though they were both seated on the deck, or as if a dozen
practical jokes, of the same character, were not in the process of
enactment, in as many different parts of the vessel.

"What makes you open your eyes, brother, in this port-hole fashion?"
commenced the topman. "This is all water that you see about you, except
that hommoc of blue in the eastern board, which is a morsel of upland in
the Bahamas, d'ye see."

"A sinful and presuming world is this we live in!" returned the good-man;
"nor can any one tell at what moment his life is to be taken from him.
Five bloody and cruel wars have I lived to see in safety and yet am I
reserved to meet this disgraceful and profane end at last."

"Well, since you've had your luck in the wars, you've the less reason to
grumble at the bit of a surge you may have felt in your garments, as they
run you up to this here yard-arm. I say, brother, I've known stouter
fellows take the same ride, who never knew when or how they got down
again."

Homespun, who did not more than half comprehend the allusion of Fid, now
regarded him in a way that announced some little desire for an
explanation, mingled with great admiration of the unconcern with which his
companion maintained his position, without the smallest aid from any thing
but his self-balancing powers.

"I say, brother," resumed Fid, "that many a stout seaman has been whipt up
to the end of a yard, who has started by the signal of a gun, and who has
staid there just as long as the president of a court-martial was pleased
to believe might be necessary to improve his honesty!"

"It would be a fearful and frightful trifling with Providence, in the
least offending and conscientious mariner, to take such awful punishments
in vain, by acting them in his sports; but doubly so do I pronounce it in
the crew of a ship on which no man can say at what hour retribution and
compunction are to alight. It seems to me unwise to tempt Providence by
such provocating exhibit