f-a-dozen of the other; ain't it, Bill?'

'Yes; like two bright bullets out of the same mould. I say, Bill, did
any of your wives ever have twins?'

'No; nor I don't intend, until the owners give us double pay.'

'By the bye,' interrupted Oswald, who had been standing under the
weather bulkhead, listening to the conversation, and watching the work
in progress, 'we may just as well see if she has made any water with all
this straining and buffeting. By the Lord! I never thought of that.
Carpenter, lay down your adze and sound the well.'

The carpenter, who, notwithstanding the uneasiness of the dismasted
vessel, was performing his important share of the work, immediately
complied with the order. He drew up the rope-yarn, to which an iron rule
had been suspended, and lowered down into the pump-well, and perceived
that the water was dripping from it. Imagining that it must have been
wet from the quantity of water shipped over all, the carpenter
disengaged the rope-yarn from the rule, drew another from the junk lying
on the deck, which the seamen were working up, and then carefully
proceeded to plumb the well. He hauled it up, and, looking at it for
some moments aghast, exclaimed, '_Seven feet_ water in the hold, by
G--d!'

If the crew of the _Circassian_, the whole of which were on deck, had
been struck with an electric shock, the sudden change of their
countenances could not have been greater than was produced by this
appalling intelligence.

Heap upon sailors every disaster, every danger which can be accumulated
from the waves, the wind, the elements, or the enemy, and they will bear
up against them with a courage amounting to heroism. All that they
demand is, that the one plank 'between them and death' is sound, and
they will trust to their own energies, and will be confident in their
own skill: but _spring a leak_, and they are half paralysed; and if it
gain upon them they are subdued; for when they find that their exertions
are futile, they are little better than children.

Oswald sprang to the pumps when he heard the carpenter's report. 'Try
again, Abel--it cannot be: cut away that line; hand us here a dry
rope-yarn.'

Once more the well was sounded by Oswald, and the result was the same.
'We must rig the pumps, my lads,' said the mate, endeavouring to conceal
his own fears; 'half this water must have found its way in when she was
on her beam-ends.'

This idea, so judiciously thrown out, was caught at by t