otion."

"Well, then, one advantage in losing your mast--you haven't much trouble
about the rigging."

"Trouble enough, though, Bill, when we get in," replied another,
gruffly; "new lower rigging to parcel and sarve, and every block to turn
in afresh."

"Never mind, longer in port--I'll get spliced."

"Why, how often do you mean to get spliced, Bill? You've a wife in
every State, to my sartin knowledge."

"I ain't got one at Liverpool, Jack."

"Well, you may take one there, Bill; for you've been sweet upon that
nigger girl for these last three weeks."

"Any port in a storm, but she won't do for harbour duty. But the fact
is, you're all wrong there, Jack, its the babbies I likes--I likes to
see them both together, hanging at the niggers' breasts, I always think
of two spider-monkeys nursing two kittens."

"I knows the women, but I never knows the children. It's just six of
one and half-a-dozen of the other; ain't it, Bill?"

"Yes; like two bright bullets out of the same mould. I say, Bill, did
any of your wives ever have twins?"

"No; nor I don't intend, until the owners give us double pay."

"By-the-bye," interrupted Oswald, who had been standing under the
weather bulk-head, listening to the conversation, and watching the work
in progress, "we may just as well see if she has made any water with all
this straining and buffeting. By the Lord I never thought of that.
Carpenter, lay down your adze and sound the well."

The carpenter, who, notwithstanding the uneasiness of the dismasted
vessel, was performing his important share of the work, immediately
complied with the order. He drew up the rope-yarn, to which an iron
rule had been suspended, and lowered down into the pump-well, and
perceived that the water was dripping from it. Imagining that it must
have been wet from the quantity of water shipped over all, the carpenter
disengaged the rope-yarn from the rule, drew another from the junk lying
on the deck, which the seamen were working up, and then carefully
proceeded to plumb the well. He hauled it up, and, looking at it for
some moments aghast, exclaimed, "_Seven feet_ of water in the hold, by
God."

If the crew of the _Circassian_, the whole of which were on deck, had
been struck with an electric shock, the sudden change of their
countenances could not have been greater than was produced by this
appalling intelligence.

Heap upon sailors every disaster, every danger which can be accumulated
f