s forward looking at me, and several men aft,
all staring intently.

A man scrambled on to the rail, and with an arm clasping a backstay
hailed me:

"Schooner ahoy!" he bawled, with a strong nasal twang in his cry. "What
ship's that?"

"The _Boca del Dragon_," I shouted back.

"Where are you from, and where are you bound to?"

"I have been locked up in the ice," I cried, "and am in want of help.
What ship are you?"

"The _Susan Tucker_, whaler, of New Bedford, twenty-seven months out,"
he returned. "Where in creation got you that hooker?"

"I'm the only man aboard," I cried, "and have no boat. Send to me, in
the name of God, and let the master come!"

He waved his hand, bawling, "Put your helm down--you're forging ahead!"
and so saying, dismounted.

I immediately cast the tiller adrift, put it hard over, and secured it,
then jumped on to the bulwarks again to watch them. She was Yankee
beyond doubt; I had rather met my own countrymen; but, next to a
British, I would have chosen an American ship to meet. Somehow, despite
the Frenchman, I felt to have been alone throughout my adventure; and so
sore was the effect of that solitude upon my spirits that it seemed
twenty years since I had seen a ship, and since I had held commune with
my own species. I was terribly agitated, and shook in every limb. Life
must have been precious always; but never before had it appeared so
precious as now, whilst I gazed at that homely ship, with her
main-topsail to the mast, swinging stately upon the swell, the faces of
the seamen plain, the smoke of her galley-fire breaking from the
chimney, the sounds of creaking blocks and groaning parrels stealing
from her. Such a fountain of joy broke out of my heart that my whole
being was flooded with it, and had that mood lasted I believe I should
have exposed the treasure in the run, and invited all the men of the
whaler to share in it with me.

They stared fixedly; little wonder that they should be astounded by such
an appearance as my ship exhibited. One of the several boats which hung
at her davits was lowered, the oars flashed, and presently she was near
enough to be hit with a biscuit; but when there the master, as I
supposed him to be, who was steering, sung out, "'Vast rowing!" the boat
came to a stand, and her people to a man stared at me with their chins
upon their shoulders as if I had been a fiend. It was plain as a
pikestaff that they were frightened, and that the superstition