n them the original
cost.

Among the steerage passengers there was a little tailor, and two
brothers who followed the trade of the awl, who always afforded much
mirth to the sailors. The little tailor, who really might have passed
for the ninth part of a man, he was so very small and insignificant, was
the most aspiring man in the ship. Climbing seemed born in him, for it
was impossible to confine him to the hold or the deck, up he most go--up
to the clouds, if the mast would only have reached so high; and there he
would sit or lie, with the sky above, and the sea below, as comfortable
and as independent as if he were sitting crosslegged upon his board in a
garret of one of the dark lofty wynds of the ancient town of Leith.

The Captain was so delighted with Sandy Rob's aspiring spirit, that he
often held jocose dialogues with him from the deck.

"Hollo, Sandy! what news above there? Can't you petition the clerk of
the weather to give us a fair wind?"

"Na, Captain, I'm thinkin' it's of na use until the change o' the mune.
I'll keep a gude look out, an' gie ye the furst intelligence o' that
event."

"And what keeps you broiling up there in the full blaze of the sun,
Sandy? The women say that they are wanting you below."

"That's mair than I'm wantin' o' them. My pleasure's above--theirs is a'
below. I'm jist thinkin', it's better to be here basking in the broad
sunshine, than deefened wi' a' their clavers; breathin' the caller air,
than suffocated wi' the stench o' that pit o' iniquity, the hould. An'
as to wha' I'm doin' up here, I'm jest lookin' out to get the furst
glint o' the blessed green earth."

"You'll be tanned as black as a nigger, Sandy, before you see the
hill-tops again. If we go on at this rate, the summer will slip past us
altogether."

Often during the night he would cry out, "Ho, Sandy! are you up there,
man? What of the night, watchman--what of the night?"

"Steady, Captain--steady. No land yet in sight."

And Boreas would answer with a loud guffaw, "If we were in the British
Channel, tailor, I'd be bound that you'd keep a good look-out for the
Needle's eye."

The shoemakers, in disposition and appearance, were quite the reverse of
the little tailor. They were a pair of slow coaches, heavy lumpish men,
who would as soon have attempted a ride to the moon on a broomstick, as
have ventured two yards up the mast. They were indefatigable eaters and
smokers, always cooking, and puffing forth s