'ats,"
having one for every hour of the day, and, for aught I know, every day
in the year. It was Fred ----'s and my daily amusement to watch him, and
we never seemed to catch him coming on deck twice in the same head-gear.
He took quite a fancy to me, because I did not bother him when busy, and
because I liked to listen to his talk. So, handing him a cigar, as a
prefatory to conversation, I asked him our whereabouts. "Four hundred
miles to the heast'ard of Georges we were this noon, and we've made
nothink to speak of since, Sir. This last tack has lost us all we made
before. I hought to know where we are. I've drifted 'ere without even a
'en-coop hunder me. I was third mate aboard the barque 'Jenny,' of
Belfast, when she was run down by the steamer 'United States.' The
barque sunk in less than seven minutes after the steamer struck us, and
I come up out of her suction-like. I found myself swimming there, on
top, and not so much as a capstan-bar to make me a life-buoy. I knew the
steamer was hove to, for I could hear her blow hoff steam; and once, as
I came up on a wave, I got a sight of her boats. They were ready enough
to pick us up, and we was ready enough to be picked up, such as were
left; but how to do it was another matter, with a sea like this
running, and a cloud over the moon every other minute. I soon see that
swimming wouldn't 'old out much longer, and I must try something helse.
Now, Sir, what I'm a-telling you may be some use to you some day, if you
have to stay a couple of hours in the water. If you can swim about as
well as most men can, you can tell 'ow long a man's strength would last
him 'ereaways to-night. Besides, I was spending my breath, when I rose
on a sea, in 'ollering,--and you can't swim and 'oller. So I tried a
trick I learned, when a boy, on the Cornish coast, where I was born,
Sir;--it's one worth knowing. I doubled back my feet hunder me till my
'eels come to the small of my back, and I could float as long as I
wanted to, and, when I rose on a wave, 'oller. They 'eard me, it seems,
and pulled round for me, but it was an hour before they found me, and my
strength was nigh to gone. I couldn't 'oller no more, and was about
giving up. But they picked up the cook, and he told 'em he knowed it was
Mr. Brown's voice, and begged 'em to keep on. The last I remember was,
as the steamer burned a blue light for her boats, when they caught a
sight of me in the trough of the sea. I saw them too, and gave