uth; and yet he
thought deeper and further than your dash-and-go gentlemen, who act on
the spur of the moment without cogitating.

"As soon as the skipper had turned in, he did a thing which perhaps not
one officer in a hundred would have done in his place, considering we
were on the open ocean out of the track of passing vessels, and that it
wasn't much darker than it is on most nights when there's no moon, and
the sky is cloudy.

"What do you think it was? Why, he put a man on the look-out on the
forecastle, just as if we were going up channel, or in a crowded sea-
way! The skipper had meant him to look-out himself, but another
wouldn't be amiss, he said.

"Providentially, too, the very man whom he accidentally selected was the
very best person he could have placed as look-out, if he had picked the
whole crew over from the captain downward; although the mate did not
know this when he sang out to him to go on the forecastle.

"This was Pat O'Brien--`Paddy,' as all the hands called him--an
Irishman, of course, as you would judge from his name, who had been in
one of the Arctic expeditions, which we were speaking of just now. He
went out with Sir Leopold McClintock I think; but all I know is, that he
once was up a whole winter in the Polar Sea, and there had got laid on
his back with scurvy, besides having his toes frost-bitten, as he
frequently told us when yarning amongst the crew of an evening.

"Generally speaking, he was a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow, and one
might have wondered that Mr Stanchion called him from out the watch
that had just came on deck; but, as I said before, the mate could not
possibly have made a better selection, as it turned out afterwards.

"Pat O'Brien was a comic chap, full of fun, and always making jokes; so
that as soon as he opened his mouth almost to say anything the other
fellows would laugh, for they knew that some lark was coming.

"`Be jabers,' says Pat, as he goes forward in obedience to the chief
officer's order, `it's a nice pleasant look-out I'll have all by
meeself! while you're coilin' the ropes here, I'll be thinkin' of my
colleen there!' and he went out on the foc'sl.

"By and by we could hear him muttering to himself. `Wurrah, wurrah!
Holy mother, can't you let me be aisy!' he sang out presently aloud as
if he was suffering from something, or in pain.

"`Look-out, ahoy!' hails Mr Stanchion from aft; `what's the matter
ahead--what are you making all that row