of a yarn which dates back some twenty-five years ago, when, but a wee bit
of a midshipman, I was the youngster of the starboard steerage mess on
board the old frigate Macedonian, then flag-ship of the West India
squadron, and bearing the broad pennant of Commodore Jesse Wilkinson.

"It would hardly interest you to tell what a clever set of lieutenants and
ward-room officers we had, and how the twenty-three reefers in the two
steerage messes kept up a racket and a row all the time, in spite of the
taut rein which the first lieutenant, Mr. Bispham, kept over us. He wore
gold-rimmed spectacles; and I can see him now, with the flat
eagle-and-anchor buttons shining on his blue coat, as he would pace the
quarter-deck, eyeing us young gentlemen of the watch, as demurely we
planked up and down the lee side, tired enough, and waiting for eight
bells to strike to rush below and call our relief. He was an austere man,
and, unlike the brave old commodore, made no allowance for our pranks and
skylarking.

"Among our crew, made up of some really splendid fellows, but with an odd
mixture of 'Mahonese,' 'Dagos,' 'Rock-Scorpions,' and other countrymen,
there was an old man-of-war's man named Sadler--a little, dried-up old
chap of some sixty years, who had fought under Nelson at Trafalgar, so he
said, and had been up and down, all around and criss-cross the world so
often that he had actually forgotten where he had been, and so had all his
geography lessons, learned by cruising experience, sadly mixed up in his
head; which, although small, with a little old, weazened frontispiece, was
full of odds and ends of yarns, with which he used to delight us young
aspirants for naval honors, as he would spin them to us on the booms on
moonlight nights, after the hammocks had been piped down. How well do I
remember the old fellow's appearance!--his neat white frock and trowsers,
his low-quarter purser's shoes, with a bit of a ribbon for a bow; no
socks, save the natural, flesh-tinted ones, a blue star, done in India
ink, gleaming on his instep; his broad blue collar, decorated with stars
and two rows of white tape, falling gracefully from a neck which, as we
youngsters asserted, had received its odd-looking twist from hanging too
long by a grape vine, with which the Isle of Pines' pirates had strung him
up when he was chasing them under old Commodore Kearney's command. Anyhow,
old, sharp-faced, wrinkled and tanned to the color of a sole-leather
tr