could find on the way.
The cap'en he scooted round into one port an' another arter his own
business,--down to Caraccas, into Rio; and when we'd rounded the Horn
and was nigh about dead of cold an' short rations, and hadn't killed but
three whales, we put into Valparaiso to get vittled, and there I laid
hold o' this little trinket of a chain, and spliced Hetty's ring on
to't, lest I should be stranded somewheres and get rid of it onawares.

"We cruised about in them seas a good year or more, with poor luck, and
the cap'en growin' more and more outrageous continually. Them waters
aren't like the Gulf, Doctor,--nor like the Northern Ocean, nohow; there
a'n't no choppin' seas there, but a great, long, everlasting lazy swell,
that goes rollin' and fallin' away like the toll of a big bell, in
endless blue rollers; and the trades blow through the sails like
singin', as warm and soft as if they blowed right out o' sunshiny
gardens; and the sky's as blue as summer all the time, only jest round
the dip on't there's allers a hull fleet o' hazy round-topped clouds, so
thin you can see the moon rise through 'em; and the waves go ripplin'
off the cut-water as peaceful as a mill-pond, day and night. Squalls
is sca'ce some times o' the year; but when there is one, I tell you a
feller hears thunder! The clouds settle right down onto the mast-head,
black and thick, like the settlin's of an ink-bottle; the lightnin'
hisses an' cuts fore and aft; and corposants come flightin' down onto
the boom or the top, gret balls o' light; and the wind roars louder than
the seas; and the rain comes down in spouts,--it don't fall fur enough
to drop; you'd think heaven and earth was come together, with hell
betwixt 'em;--and then it'll all clear up as quiet and calm as a
Simsbury Sunday; and you wouldn't know it could be squally, if 'twan't
for the sail that you hadn't had a chance to furl was drove to ribbons,
and here an' there a stout spar snapped like a cornstalk, or the
bulwarks stove by a heavy sea. There's queer things to be heerd, too, in
them parts: cries to wind'ard like a drowndin' man, and you can't never
find him; noises right under the keel; bells ringin' off the land like,
when you a'n't within five hundred miles of shore; and curus hails out
o' ghost-ships that sails agin' wind an' tide.--Strange! strange! I
declare for't! seems as though I heerd my old mother a-singin' Mear
now!"

I saw Jackson was getting excited, so I gave him a littl