o must have been drowned; while
even the life-buoy itself had drifted away out of sight.

The forecastle-men fished it up from the bows, and the seamen thronged
round it.

"Bad luck! bad luck!" cried the Captain of the Head; "we'll number one
less before long."

The ship's cooper strolled by; he, to whose department it belongs to
see that the ship's life-buoys are kept in good order.

In men-of-war, night and day, week in and week out, two life-buoys are
kept depending from the stern; and two men, with hatchets in their
hands, pace up and down, ready at the first cry to cut the cord and
drop the buoys overboard. Every two hours they are regularly relieved,
like sentinels on guard. No similar precautions are adopted in the
merchant or whaling service.

Thus deeply solicitous to preserve human life are the regulations of
men-of-war; and seldom has there been a better illustration of this
solicitude than at the battle of Trafalgar, when, after "several
thousand" French seamen had been destroyed, according to Lord
Collingwood, and, by the official returns, sixteen hundred and ninety
Englishmen were killed or wounded, the Captains of the surviving ships
ordered the life-buoy sentries from their death-dealing guns to their
vigilant posts, as officers of the Humane Society.

"There, Bungs!" cried Scrimmage, a sheet-anchor-man,[2] "there's a good
pattern for you; make us a brace of life-buoys like that; something
that will save a man, and not fill and sink under him, as those leaky
quarter-casks of yours will the first time there's occasion to drop
'ern. I came near pitching off the bowsprit the other day; and, when I
scrambled inboard again, I went aft to get a squint at 'em. Why, Bungs,
they are all open between the staves. Shame on you! Suppose you
yourself should fall over-board, and find yourself going down with
buoys under you of your own making--what then?"

----

[FOOTNOTE-2] In addition to the _Bower-anchors_ carried on her bows, a
frigate carries large anchors in her fore-chains, called
_Sheet-anchors_. Hence, the old seamen stationed in that part of a
man-of-war are called _sheet-anchor-man_.

----

"I never go aloft, and don't intend to fall overboard," replied Bungs.

"Don't believe it!" cried the sheet-anchor-man; "you lopers that live
about the decks here are nearer the bottom of the sea than the light
hand that looses the main-royal. Mind your eye, Bungs--mind your eye!"

"I will," retorted Bungs