the base, and terminating in the clouds with the
light copestone of the royals. That immense area of snow-white canvas
sliding along the sea was indeed a magnificent spectacle. The three
shrouded masts looked like the apparitions of three gigantic Turkish
Emirs striding over the ocean.

Nor, at times, was the sound of music wanting, to augment the poetry of
the scene. The whole band would be assembled on the poop, regaling the
officers, and incidentally ourselves, with their fine old airs. To
these, some of us would occasionally dance in the _top_, which was
almost as large as an ordinary sized parlour. When the instrumental
melody of the band was not to be had, our nightingales mustered their
voices, and gave us a song.

Upon these occasions Jack Chase was often called out, and regaled us,
in his own free and noble style, with the "_Spanish Ladies_"--a
favourite thing with British man-of-war's-men--and many other salt-sea
ballads and ditties, including,

"Sir Patrick Spens was the best sailor
That ever sailed the sea."

also,

"And three times around spun our gallant ship;
Three times around spun she;
Three times around spun our gallant ship,
And she went to the bottom of the sea--
The sea, the sea, the sea,
And she went to the bottom of the sea!"

These songs would be varied by sundry _yarns_ and _twisters_ of the
top-men. And it was at these times that I always endeavoured to draw
out the oldest Tritons into narratives of the war-service they had
seen. There were but few of them, it is true, who had been in action;
but that only made their narratives the more valuable.

There was an old negro, who went by the name of Tawney, a
sheet-anchor-man, whom we often invited into our top of tranquil
nights, to hear him discourse. He was a staid and sober seaman, very
intelligent, with a fine, frank bearing, one of the best men in the
ship, and held in high estimation by every one.

It seems that, during the last war between England and America, he had,
with several others, been "impressed" upon the high seas, out of a New
England merchantman. The ship that impressed him was an English
frigate, the Macedonian, afterward taken by the Neversink, the ship in
which we were sailing.

It was the holy Sabbath, according to Tawney, and, as the Briton bore
down on the American--her men at their quarters--Tawney and his
countrymen, who happened to be stationed at the qu