rrangements.
"I couldn't have done it no betther mesilf! Ye can well-nigh swing a
cat round, which it would a poozled ye to a-done afore, faix. An' sure,
Misther Gray-ham, does ye loike bayin' at say yit?"

"Of course I do," I answered. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Begorra, ye're a caution!" he ejaculated. "An', did that haythin,
Ching Wang, wake ye up this mornin' wid some coffee, as he promised me.
I wor too busy to say you or ax you afore?"

"Yes," I replied; "and many thanks for your kind thoughtfulness."

"Stow that flummery," he cried; and to prevent my thanking him he began
to tell Jerrold and me one of his funny yarns about a pig which his
grandmother had, but unfortunately the story was nipped in the bud by a
roar from the captain on the poop.

"Hands 'bout ship!"

In a second the boatswain was away piping on the forecastle, and ropes
cast off and sails flapping again.

"Helms a-lee!" was the next order from the captain, followed by a second
which grew familiar enough to me in time. "Raise tacks and sheets!" and
the foretack and main-sheet were cast off with the weather main-brace
hauled taut.

Then came the final command, "Main-sail haul!" and the Silver Queen came
up to the wind slowly. The foretack being then boarded and the main-
sheet hauled aft, she heeled over on the starboard tack with the wind
well on her starboard beam, heading towards the South Foreland, which
she rounded soon after.

Off Dungeness, which we reached about three in the afternoon, or "six
bells," exactly twenty-four hours from the time of our leaving the
docks, we hove-to, backing our main-topsail and hoisting a whiff at the
peak as a signal that we wanted a boat from the shore to disembark our
pilot.

A dandy-rigged little cutter soon came dancing out to us; when the thin
man in the monkey-jacket took his farewell of Captain Gillespie and went
on board to be landed, the Silver Queen filling again and shaping a
course west by south for Beachy Head, and so on down channel, free now
of the last link that bound her to old England.

The afternoon, however, was not destined to pass without another
incident.

It was getting on for sunset; and, steering more to the west well out
from the land so as to avoid the Royal Sovereign shoal, we must have
been just abreast of Hastings, although we could not see it, the weather
thickening at the time, when suddenly a strange bird settled on the
rigging utterly exhausted. It had evidently