motion expressing an infinite sarcasm as he added,—"however unwillin'."
So for this voyage at least Ben was signed up without examining the articles.
It was a fair one almost all the way down. Even Hatteras was not inclement and off the Carolinas, though the wind edged a little towards the north, it continued so favouring that they ran before it, three shining towers of cupolaed canvas under the bluest of skies. Fortune had not so smiled on them for many moons. But on the ninth day out, she and her breezes shifted most capriciously. Now folk who work under white, wind-driven canvas are quite as superstitious as those who play before its still, painted walls, and the crew, from the second officer down to the little runt of a cabin-boy, declared it was "all on account o' that black cat."
It was a hundred miles southeast of Forida, and in the morning. All one could see was a gentle respiration of waters fulfilling that pathetic fallacy of unnumbered poets, seeming indeed asleep. All one could hear was a gentle swish as the ship's prow shore their pellucid green. Astern a shark's fin winked threateningly.
Forward and in the waist, the hands were sluicing the decks, or mending the ship's-gear. In the standing rigging, six of them sang as they dipped their brushes into little buckets of tar,—an old Down East chanty, slow-measured and mournful. No one was in the foc's'le except a foreign seaman, who had gone below a few hours before, complaining of a touch of fever.
Suddenly three screams split the still air in rapid succes-
