every circumstance of her short, eventful life, came thronging into
her mind, as they travelled on! Slight incidents, never thought of or
remembered until now; faces, seen once and ever since forgotten; words
scarcely heeded at the time; scenes, of a year ago and those of
yesterday, mixing up and linking themselves together; familiar places
shaping themselves out in the darkness from things which, when
approached, were, of all others, the most remote and most unlike them;
sometimes, a strange confusion in her mind relative to the occasion of
her being there, and the place to which she was going, and the people
she was with; and imagination suggesting remarks and questions which
sounded so plainly in her ears, that she would start, and turn, and be
almost tempted to reply;--all the fancies and contradictions common in
watching and excitement and restless change of place, beset the child.

She happened, while she was thus engaged, to encounter the face of the
man on deck, in whom the sentimental stage of drunkenness had now
succeeded to the boisterous, and who, taking from his mouth a short
pipe, quilted over with string for its longer preservation, requested
that she would oblige him with a song.

'You've got a very pretty voice, a very soft eye, and a very strong
memory,' said this gentleman; 'the voice and eye I've got evidence for,
and the memory's an opinion of my own. And I'm never wrong. Let me
hear a song this minute.'

'I don't think I know one, sir,' returned Nell.

'You know forty-seven songs,' said the man, with a gravity which
admitted of no altercation on the subject. 'Forty-seven's your number.
Let me hear one of 'em--the best. Give me a song this minute.'

Not knowing what might be the consequences of irritating her friend,
and trembling with the fear of doing so, poor Nell sang him some little
ditty which she had learned in happier times, and which was so
agreeable to his ear, that on its conclusion he in the same peremptory
manner requested to be favoured with another, to which he was so
obliging as to roar a chorus to no particular tune, and with no words
at all, but which amply made up in its amazing energy for its
deficiency in other respects. The noise of this vocal performance
awakened the other man, who, staggering upon deck and shaking his late
opponent by the hand, swore that singing was his pride and joy and
chief delight, and that he desired no better entertainment. With a
third ca