er a pair of black, velvet
breeches; over their cucumber shanks they had drawn white silk
stockings, regardless of the cold; their feet were encased in buckled
shoes, and their costumes were completed by scarlet and blue waistcoats
which fell to their knees, and crimson and blue coats with immense
skirts. What struck me as most astonishing was their gravity. Their
self-complacency was prodigious; they eyed each other with dignified
approbation, and strutted with the air of provincial mayors and aldermen
newly arrived from the presence of royalty.

"They're in keepin' with the schooner, any ways," said Wilkinson.

And so perhaps they were. The antique fabric needed the sparkle of those
costumes on her deck to make her aspect fit in with the imaginations she
bred. But, as I had anticipated, the cold proved too powerful for their
conceit, and they were presently glad to ship their more modern
trousers, though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats, and could
not be persuaded to remove their hats on any account whatever.

CHAPTER XXX.

OUR PROGRESS TO THE CHANNEL.

When I started to relate my adventure I never designed to write an
account of the journey home at large. On the contrary, I foresaw that,
by the time I had arrived at this part, you would have had enough of the
sea. Let me now, then, be as brief as possible.

The melting of the ice and the slowly increasing power of the sun were
inexpressibly consoling to me who had had so much of the cold that I do
protest if Elysium were bleak, no matter how radiant, and the abode of
the fiends as hot as it is pictured, I would choose to turn my back upon
the angels. I cannot say, however, that the schooner was properly thawed
until we were hard upon the parallels of the Falkland Islands; she then
showed her timbers naked to the sun, and exposed a brown solid deck
rendered ugly by several dark patches which, scrape as we might, we
could not obliterate. We struck the guns into the hold for the better
ballasting of the vessel, got studding-sail booms aloft, overhauled her
suits of canvas and found a great square sail which proved of
inestimable importance in light winds and in running. After the ice was
wholly melted out of her frame she made a little water, yet not so much
but that half an hour's spell at the pump twice a day easily freed her.
But, curiously enough, at the end of a fortnight she became tight again,
which I attribute to the swelling of her timbe