arters were not only light, airy, and comfortable, but
were being finished off with great taste and considerable pretensions to
luxury. While I was prowling about below I encountered Harry Martin,
the son of the builder, who told me that Mr White, when completing the
purchase of the vessel, had given instructions that no reasonable
expense was to be spared in making the craft as thoroughly suitable as
possible for the service of a privateer. I spent fully two hours on
board, prying into every nook and cranny of the vessel, and making
myself thoroughly familiar with the whole of her interior arrangements,
and then left, well satisfied with my prospects as second mate of so
smart and comfortable a craft.

As I was crossing Hope Square, toward the foot of Scrambridge Hill, on
my way home again, I met Captain Winter, who, after congratulating me
upon my appointment, informed me that he had secured _carte blanche_
from the owner as to the number of the crew, and that he was determined
to have the vessel strongly manned enough to enable her to keep at sea
even after sending away a prize crew or two. He was therefore anxious
to secure as many good men as possible, and he suggested that I could
not better employ my spare time than in looking about for such, and
sending to him as many as I could find. This I did; and as the skipper
and Mr Lovell, the chief mate, were both industriously engaged in the
same manner, we contrived, by the time that the schooner was ready for
sea, to scrape together a crew of ninety men, all told--a large
proportion of whom were Portlanders,--as fine fellows, for the most
part, as ever trod a plank.

The schooner was launched a fortnight from the day upon which I had
first visited her, and as she slid off the ways Joe Martin's youngest
daughter christened her, giving her the name of the _Dolphin_. She was
launched with her two lower-masts in, and was at once taken up the
harbour and moored opposite Mr White's warehouse, where the work of
rigging her and getting her guns and stores on board was forthwith
commenced. Thenceforward I was kept busy every day, assisting the
skipper and Mr Lovell in the task of fitting-out; and so diligently did
we work that by mid-day of the 26th of November the _Dolphin_ was all
ataunto and ready for sea. And a very handsome, rakish, and formidable
craft she looked, as she lay alongside the quay, her enormously long and
delicately-tapering masts towering high above