gerness to hear all that was going on, the captain's wrath was
directed towards those aft, and he wheeled round and swore at the
second-mate, who was on the poop, leaning over the rail, bawling out
louder than before:--"What the infernal dickens are ye about thaar,
Mister Steenbock? Snakes an' alligators! why, ye'll have us all aback
in another minute! Ease her off, ease her off gently; an' hev thet
lubber at the wheel relieved; d'ye haar? Ha ain't worth a cuss! Get a
man thet ken steer in his place. Jerusalem! Up with the helm at once!"

Fortunately, the jib only gybed, while the fore-topsail slatted a bit
against the mast; and all the other sails remaining full and drawing, a
slight shift of the helm sufficed to put the ship on her proper course.
Still, the captain, now his blood was up, could not afford to lose such
a good opportunity both for rating the second-mate for his carelessness
in conning the ship and not making the helmsman keep her steady on her
course, and also in giving a little extra work to the hands who had
dared to murmur at his fearful vengeance on the cook for drugging his
food. So he made them bustle about the deck in style, slacking off the
lee braces and hauling upon these on the weather side, until we had
brought the wind almost over the stern, with the yards pretty nearly
square. We were now running before it, rolling from port to starboard
and back again from starboard to port, almost gunwales under, with the
sail we had on us now, for it was blowing a good ten-knot breeze from
the nor'-nor'-west, the breeze having shifted again since sunset, right
astern, instead of being dead ahead, as previously, of our proper tract
for the open sea.

When Captain Snaggs had seen everything braced round, and the boom-sheet
of the spanker likewise eased off, he turned to where I was still lashed
up against the main shrouds, in dread expectancy every moment of his
renewing the thrashing he had commenced, and which poor Sam's plucky
intervention on my behalf had for the time interrupted.

"Well, ye young cuss!" said the skipper, who had been giving all his
orders from the lower deck, which he had not left since he had rolled
out from the cuddy under the poop in the paroxysm of passion and pain
that led to such a dread catastrophe--all that had happened, although it
takes a long time to describe, having occurred within a very brief
interval of his first outburst on me. "What hev ye got to say for
y'