e ship, and
a remarkably handsome man, now came over the side into the barge, to
arrange the ladies for their aeronautic excursion, safer than Durant's,
for their car was slung with strong hemp not dependent upon a bag of
inflammable gas. As a matter of course, he tendered his services to the
old lady first, who, though she had been _whipped_ in and out of as many
ships as any English dragoon-horse during the war of the Peninsula,
thought proper to curvet and prance, and show as much skittishness as a
mule embarking at Hartford, or Weathersfield, or Middletown, for a tour
of duty at Surinam or Demerara. She was, however, hoisted in without
accident, and received on deck by Captain Hazard and Mr. Coffin, the
second officer, with much politeness. The two young ladies were the next
in order, and accomplished their flight successfully. Isabella lastly
took her seat in the chair without trepidation or affectation of alarm.
Morton's eyes had already done hommage to her superior beauty; but he
was too busy with the other ladies to notice her any farther than as the
most lovely of the female visitors. He now remarked the pensive
expression of her lovely countenance, and it excited in his heart an
undefinable and uncontrollable interest. We have already said that
Isabella inherited her mother's beauty, which had not one of the usual
characteristics of a Spanish female countenance; and it was this
peculiarity that struck the young seaman forcibly, and probably
increased the interest he felt towards her, and the curiosity to know
something more of her history, as he had only understood vaguely that
she was Don Gaspar's niece.

There is a peculiar phrase, or rather word, that I have left
unexplained, and concerning which I will now proceed to enlighten the
terrestrial and unenlightened reader. I spoke of whipping the ladies
into the ship. The whip, then, consists of a tail-block on the main
yard-arm, with a sufficient rope rove through it, and a similar purchase
on the collar of the main-stay. One end of each of these ropes is made
fast to a stout arm-chair, covered generally with the ship's ensign,
with the loose part of which the lady wraps her feet. The other ends are
in the hands of careful, steady seamen. The lady, being arranged and
fixed in the chair, with a "breast-rope" from arm to arm, (of the
chair, not of the lady,) is hoisted up by the yard-whip till she has
approached the zenith sufficiently to go clear of the waist