whistle, on shipboard at least, but does
sing.

Besides the working-day songs, there are others for the forecastle and
dog-watches, which have been already described. But they are seldom of the
parlor pattern. I remember one lovely moonlight evening, off the Irish
coast, when our ship was slipping along before a light westerly air,--just
enough of it for everything to draw, and the ship as steady as Ailsa Crag,
so that everybody got on deck, even the chronically sea-sick passengers of
the steerage. There was a boy on board, a steerage passenger, who had been
back and forth several times on this Liverpool line of packets. He was set
to singing, and his sweet, clear voice rang out with song after song,--
almost all of them sad ones. At last one of the crew called on him for a
song which he made some demur at singing. I remember the refrain well (for
he _did_ sing it at last); it ran thus:--

"My crew are tried, my bark's my pride,
I'm the Pirate of the Isles."

It was no rose-water piracy that the boy sang of; it was the genuine
pirate of the Isle of Pines,--the gentleman who before the days of
California and steamers was the terror of the Spanish Main. He was
depicted as falling in deadly combat with a naval cruiser, after many
desperate deeds. What was most striking to us of the cabin was, that the
sympathy of the song, and evidently of the hearers, was all on the side of
the defier of law and order. There was no nonsense in it about "islands on
the face of the deep where the winds never blow and the skies never weep,"
which to the parlor pirate are the indications of a capital station for
wood and water, and for spending his honeymoon. It was downright cutting
of throats and scuttling of ships that our youngster sang of, and the grim
faces looked and listened approvingly, as you might fancy Ulysses's
veterans hearkening to a tale of Troy.

There is another class of songs, half of the sea, half of the shore, which
the fishermen and coasters croon in their lonely watches. Such is the
rhyme of "Uncle Peleg," or "Pillick," as it is pronounced,--probably an
historical ballad concerning some departed worthy of the Folger family of
Nantucket. It begins--

"Old Uncle Pillick he built him a boat
On the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int;
He rolled up his trowsers and set her afloat
From the ba-a-ck side of Nantucket P'int."

Like "Christabel," this remains a fragment. Not so the legend of "Captain
Cottington,"