TOUGH YARNS.

Tough yarns--The sea-serpent--The fair-wind sellers of Bremen--Mermen
and mermaidens--Capture of Spanish schooner with mulatto
laundresses on board--Boat attack on, and capture of the French
privateer _Salamandre_--Outbreak of malignant scurvy--Novel method
of treatment--French women dressed as men--A voyage of discovery.

We generally had about seventy men in the sick list, and were at anchor
nearly four months--half the crew doing nothing and the other half helping
them. They generally amused themselves by dancing, singing, or telling
tough yarns. I was much entertained by hearing some of them relate the
following stories, which they declared were true.

"My brother," said one of these galley-benchmen, "belonged to the
_Unicorn_, of Shields, which traded to Archangel in the White Sea. I
suppose," said he, "it is called the White Sea because there is much snow
on the shore, which throws a kind of white reflection on the water. Well,
the ship had anchored about a mile from the town, when my brother, who had
the middle watch, saw something like the ship's buoy close to the vessel.
At first he took little notice of it until it raised itself about three
feet out of the water and opened a mouth wide enough to swallow a Yankee
flour-barrel. He was very much afeared, for he was only a young chap
without much experience. He immediately jumped down to the chief mate's
cabin and told him what he had seen. They both went on deck, the mate
armed with a loaded pistol and my brother with a cutlass. By this time the
serpent--for it was a sea-serpent--had twisted itself round the bowsprit of
the vessel, and was about twenty feet long. Its eyes were about the size
of the scuppers and shined like the morning star." "Why, Bill," said one
of the listeners, "clap a stopper on that yarn; those sarpents are only
seen on the coast of Ameriky, and nobody but Yankees ever seed them."
"Avast, Bob," replied the narrator, "don't be too hasty; it is as true as
the mainstay is moused, for I never knew Jack tell a lie (meaning his
brother), and now I'll fill and stand on. The boatswain, hearing the
noise, came on deck. The mate pointed to the monster, and told him to get
an axe. The beast had bristled up like an American porcupine and was ready
to dart at them when the mate got abaft the foremast and fired at its
head, which he missed, but struck it in the neck. The animal, finding
itself w