the accident.

The captain walked up and down the deck with the first mate, rubbing his
hands as he watched the full sails, and the water gleaming past her
sides.

"We shall do, Seth, we shall do," he said, "and make a quick voyage of
it after all."

"Mustn't carry on too much, though, Cap'en!" said the mate with a
knowing twinkle of his eye, which the skipper could read plainly enough.

"Stow that, Seth," said he chuckling. "I s'pose you'll never let me
hear the last of that buster I went t'other day. Don't you be skeart,
old man; you won't catch this coon napping twice. The breeze is
splendid, though, Seth, ain't it? Guess we'll make a good run of it
after all!"

"So think I, Cap'en," replied the mate with corresponding heartiness.
"It will last, too," he added, after another glance round the horizon;
"and I reckon we'll not get any more nasty weather; the gale has about
blowed itself out!"

"Right you are," said Captain Blowser, slapping him on the back in his
jovial way when he felt especially good-tempered; "an' we'll have an
extra glass of old Bourbon come dinner-time on the strength of it, old
boss! How the beauty does walk, to be sure! I wouldn't swap a timber
of her for the best Philadelphia-built clipper out of the Delaware!"

"Nor I," acquiesced the mate, whose opinion the skipper valued so highly
that this encomium of his as to the transcendent merits of the _Susan
Jane_, which was really a splendid craft in her way, and a capital sea
boat, completed the sum of his happiness; and he had just called out to
Jasper, the steward, to bring up an Angostura cocktail to cement their
feelings of friendship and get up an appetite for dinner, which would
not be ready for another hour, when the voice of Tom Cannon was heard
hailing the deck from the foretop.

"Darn that chap, he's allers hailing!" exclaimed the skipper. "What the
dickens does he want now?"

"He don't call out for nothin'," said the mate. "He's too cute a seaman
for that! When Tom Cannon hails, you may depend on it, Cap'en, it's
time to look out for squalls!"

"Blow your squalls!" said the captain good-humouredly. "You don't want
me to take in sail surely with this wind, you old Mother Carey's
chicken? But let's listen to what Tom says. He's a smart man, I
reckon, sure enough--the smartest sailor we've got in the ship; and I
was only jokin' when I said that about his hailing!"

Tom Cannon's favourite place of resort when the shi