's naps,' as some
compensation for the loss of their regular sleep, the latter approached
his superior, who stood gazing over the hammock-cloths in the direction of
the Cove, and spoke.

"A dark night, smooth water, and fresh hands make boating agreeable duty!"
he said. "The gentlemen are in fine heart, and full of young men's hopes;
but he who lays that brigantine aboard, will, in my poor judgment, have
more work to do than merely getting up her side. I was in the foremost
boat that boarded a Spaniard in the Mona, last war; and though we went
into her with light heels, some of us were brought out with broken
heads.--I think the fore-top-gallant-mast has a better set, Captain
Ludlow, since we gave the last pull at the rigging?"

"It stands well;" returned his half-attentive commander. "Give it the
other drag, if you think best."

"Just as you please, Sir; 'tis all one to me. I care not if the mast is
hove all of one side, like the hat on the head of a country buck; but when
a thing is as it ought to be, reason would tell us to let it alone. Mr.
Luff was of opinion, that by altering the slings of the main-yard, we
should give a better set to the top-sail sheets; but it was little that
could be done with the stick aloft, and I am ready to pay Her Majesty the
difference between the wear of the sheets as they stand now, and as Mr.
Luff would have them, out of my own pocket, though it is often as empty as
a parish church in which a fox-hunting parson preaches. I was present,
once, when a real tally-ho was reading the service, and one of your
godless squires got in the wake of a fox, with his hounds, within hail of
the church-windows! The cries had some such effect on my roarer, as a puff
of wind would have on this ship; that is to say, he sprung his luff, and
though he kept on muttering something I never knew what, his eyes were in
the fields the whole time the pack was in view. But this wasn't the worst
of it; for when he got fairly back to his work again, the wind had been
blowing the leaves of his book about, and he plumped us into the middle of
the marriage ceremony. I am no great lawyer, but there were those who said
it was a god-send that half the young men in the parish weren't married
to their own grandmothers!"

"I hope the match was agreeable to the family," said Ludlow, relieving one
elbow by resting the weight of his head on the other.

"Why, as to that, I will not take upon me to say since the clerk correcte