first voyage, and I predict a prosperous one."

"I hope so," he said.

Well, we went on prosperously enough for about three weeks; the ocean
was as calm and as smooth as a meadow, the breeze light but good, and we
stemmed along majestically over the deep blue waters, and passed coast
after coast, though all around was nothing but the apparently pathless
main in sight.

"A better sailer I never stepped into," said the captain one day; "it
would be a pleasure to live and die in such a vessel."

Well, as I said, we had been three weeks or thereabouts, when one
morning, after the sun was up and the decks washed, we saw a strange man
sitting on one of the water-casks that were on deck, for, being full, we
were compelled to stow some of them on deck.

You may guess those on deck did a little more than stare at this strange
and unexpected apparition. By jingo, I never saw men open their eyes
wider in all my life, nor was I any exception to the rule. I stared, as
well I might; but we said nothing for some minutes, and the stranger
looked calmly on us, and then cocked his eye with a nautical air up at
the sky, as if he expected to receive a twopenny-post letter from St.
Michael, or a _billet doux_ from the Virgin Mary.

"Where has he come from?" said one of the men in a low tone to his
companion, who was standing by him at that moment.

"How can I tell?" replied his companion. "He may have dropped from the
clouds; he seems to be examining the road; perhaps he is going back."

The stranger sat all this time with the most extreme and provoking
coolness and unconcern; he deigned us but a passing notice, but it was
very slight.

He was a tall, spare man--what is termed long and lathy--but he was
evidently a powerful man. He had a broad chest, and long, sinewy arms, a
hooked nose, and a black, eagle eye. His hair was curly, but frosted by
age; it seemed as though it had been tinged with white at the
extremities, but he was hale and active otherwise, to judge from
appearances.

Notwithstanding all this, there was a singular repulsiveness about him
that I could not imagine the cause, or describe; at the same time there
was an air of determination in his wild and singular-looking eyes, and
over their whole there was decidedly an air and an appearance so
sinister as to be positively disagreeable.

"Well," said I, after we had stood some minutes, "where did you come
from, shipmate?"

He looked at me and then up at the sky,