verboard the
slings, and hoisted them out of the water.

It was a sight that Bacchus and his bacchanals would have gloated over.
Each puncheon was of a deep-green color, so covered with minute
barnacles and shell-fish, and streaming with sea-weed, that it needed
long searching to find out their bung-holes; they looked like venerable
old _loggerhead-turtles._ How long they had been tossing about, and
making voyages for the benefit of the flavour of their contents, no one
could tell. In trying to raft them ashore, or on board of some
merchant-ship, they must have drifted off to sea. This we inferred from
the ropes that length-wise united them, and which, from one point of
view, made them resemble a long sea-serpent. They were _struck_ into
the gun-deck, where, the eager crowd being kept off by sentries, the
cooper was called with his tools.

"Bung up, and bilge free!" he cried, in an ecstasy, flourishing his
driver and hammer.

Upon clearing away the barnacles and moss, a flat sort of shell-fish
was found, closely adhering, like a California-shell, right over one of
the bungs. Doubtless this shell-fish had there taken up his quarters,
and thrown his own body into the breach, in order the better to
preserve the precious contents of the cask. The by-standers were
breathless, when at last this puncheon was canted over and a tin-pot
held to the orifice. What was to come forth? salt-water or wine? But a
rich purple tide soon settled the question, and the lieutenant assigned
to taste it, with a loud and satisfactory smack of his lips, pronounced
it Port!

"Oporto!" cried Mad Jack, "and no mistake!"

But, to the surprise, grief, and consternation of the sailors, an order
now came from the quarter-deck to strike the "strangers down into the
main-hold!" This proceeding occasioned all sorts of censorious
observations upon the Captain, who, of course, had authorised it.

It must be related here that, on the passage out from home, the
Neversink had touched at Madeira; and there, as is often the case with
men-of-war, the Commodore and Captain had laid in a goodly stock of
wines for their own private tables, and the benefit of their foreign
visitors. And although the Commodore was a small, spare man, who
evidently emptied but few glasses, yet Captain Claret was a portly
gentleman, with a crimson face, whose father had fought at the battle
of the Brandywine, and whose brother had commanded the well-known
frigate named in honour