why the schooner didn't
answer her helm. Meanwhile, he was singing out to the watch to brace
round the fore-topsail and help her, to let fly the jib-sheets, and to
haul aft the main-boom; the watch below came tumbling up, and everybody
was expecting to feel the bunt of our striking the next minute. I
laughed as though I should split; for nobody could see me where I stood,
in the shadow of the companion-way, and everybody was looking out ahead,
for the other vessel. First I knew, the old man had got in board again,
and was standing there aft, as if he'd just come on deck. 'What's all
this noise here?' says he.--'What are you doing on deck, Mr. Cope? Go
below, Sir!--Go below, the larboard watch, and let's have no more of
this! Who's seen any vessel? Vessel, your eye, Mr. Tubbs! I tell you,
you've been dreaming.' Then, as he got his head about to the level of
the top of the companion-way, and out of the reach of any spare
belaying-pin that might come that way, says he,--'I've just come in from
the end of the flyin'-jib-boom, and there was no vessel in sight, except
one topsail-schooner, _with the watch all asleep_,--so it can't be her
that hailed you.'

"That cured all sleeping on the watch for _that_ voyage, I tell you. And
as for Tubbs, you had only to say, 'Port your helm,' and he was off."

Just then Mr. Brown came aft to ask if it wasn't time to have in the
fore-topgallant-sail,--and a little splash of rain falling broke up our
party and drove most of us below. I knew that reefing topsails would
come in the course of an hour or so, if the wind held on to blow as it
did; so, as I waited to see that same, I lighted a cheroot, and as soon
as the fore-topgallant-sail was clewed up I made my way forward, for a
chat with Mr. Brown, the English second mate.

Mr. Brown was a character. He was a thorough English sailor;--could do,
as he owned to me in a shamefaced way, that was comical enough,
"heverything as could be done with a rope aboard a ship." He had been
several India voyages, where the nice work of seamanship is to be
learned, which does not get into the mere "ferry-boat" trips of the
Liverpool packet-service. He had been in an opium clipper, the
celebrated ---- of Boston,--and left her, as he told her agent, "because
he liked a ship as 'ad a lee-rail to her; and the ----'s lee-rail," he
said, "was commonly out of sight, pretty much all the way from the
Sand'eads to the Bocca Tigris." He was rich in what he called "