s have it.

"That's the boat," said Joe, affecting to call the Sea Lion by a
diminutive, as a proof of regard; "yes, that's the craft, herself; but she
is wonderfully deep in the water! I never seed a schooner of her tonnage,
come in from a v'y'ge, with her scuppers so near awash. Don't you think,
Jim, there must be suthin' heavier than skins, in her hold, to bring her
down so low in the water?"

Jim was another loafer, who lived by taking clams, oysters, fish, and the
other treasures of the surrounding bays. He was by no means as bigh
authority as Baiting Joe; still he was always authority on a wharf.

"I never seed the like on't," answered Jim. "That schooner must ha' made
most of her passage under water. She's as deep as one of our coasters
comin' in with a load o' brick!"

"She's deep; but not as deep as a craft I once made a cruise in. I was
aboard of the first of Uncle Sam's gun-boats, that crossed the pond to
Gibraltar. When we got in, it made the Mediterranean stare, I can tell
you! We had furrin officers aboard us, the whull time, lookin' about, and
wonderin', as they called it, if we wasn't amphibbies."

"What's that?" demanded Jim, rather hastily. "There's no sich rope in the
ship."

"I know that well enough; but an amphibby, as I understand it, is a new
sort of whale, that comes up to breathe, like all of that family, as old
Dr. Mitchell, of Cow Neck, calls the critturs. So the furrin officers
thought we must be of the amphibby family, to live so much under water, as
it seemed to them. It was wet work, I can tell you, boys; I don't think I
got a good breath more than once an hour, the whull of the first day we
was out. One of the furrin officers asked our captain how the gun-boat
steered. He wasn't a captain, at all--only a master, you see, and we all
called him Jumpin' Billy. So Jumpin' Billy says, 'Don't know, sir.' 'What!
crossed the Atlantic in her, and don't know how your craft steers!' says
the furrin officer, says he--and well he might, Jim, since nothin' that
ever lived could go from Norfolk to Gibraltar, without _some_ attention to
the helm--but Jumpin' Billy had another story to tell. 'No, sir; don't
know,' he answered. 'You see, sir, a nor-wester took us right aft, as we
cleared the capes, and down she dove, with her nose under and her starn
out, and she come across without having a chance to try the rudder.'"

This story, which Joe had told at least a hundred times before, and which,
by th