was in an ecstasy of astonishment, at this relation of the steward's dangers, "what did you do?"
"Do! why we did our duty, like good hearty fellows. Now, if the countrymen of Mounsheer Ler Quaw had been aboard of her, they would have just struck her ashore on some of them small islands; but we run along the land until we found her dead to leeward off the mountains of Pico, and dam'me, if I know to this day how we got there, whether we jumped over the island, or hauled round it: but there we was, and there we lay, under easy sail, fore-reaching, first upon one tack and then upon t'other, so as to poke her nose out now and then, and take a look to wind'ard, till the gale blow'd its pipe out."
"I wonder now!" exclaimed Remarkable, to whom most of the terms used by Benjamin were perfectly unintelligible, but who had got a confused idea of a raging tempest; "it must be an awful life, that going to sea! and I don't feel astonishment that you're so affronted with the thoughts of being forced to quit a comfortable home like this. Not that a body cares much for't, as there's more housen than one to live in. Why, when the Judge agreed with me to come and live with him, I'd no more notion of stopping any time, than any thing. I happened in, just to see how the family did, about a week after Miss Temple died, thinking to be back home agin night; but the family was in sitch a distressed way, that I could'nt but stop awhile and help 'em on. I thought the sitooation a good one, seeing that I was an unmarried body, and they were so much in want of help; so I tarried."
"And a long time have you left your anchors down in the same place, mistress; I think you must find that the ship rides easy?"
"How you talk, Benjamin! there's no believ-
