"Ah, there's old Jack o' lantern!" he answered composedly. "Not a bad sign either. A gale seldom lasts long after he has come. Look at him, he is rather playful to-night." He was indeed. Sometimes the light would ascend and then descend the masts, then run along the yards, and waiting a little at each yard-arm, would be back again and slip down one of the stays to the fore-mast, and mount up in a second to the fore-topmast head. Sometimes, when the ship rolled very much, the mast-head would leave it floating in the air, but as she rolled back again it would quickly re-attach itself. More than once it got divided into several parts, as it flew about the rigging, but was very speedily re-united again. Cousin Silas laughed when I told him that I thought it might do us some injury. "Oh no; Jack is a very harmless fellow," he answered. "More than once, when it has not been blowing as hard as it does now, before I was out of my apprenticeship, I and others have chased Jack about the rigging, and caught him too. When near, he seems to have a very dull, pale light. I and another fellow determined to have him. At last I clutched him. I felt that I had got something clammy, as it were, which stung my skin like a handful of thin jelly-fish. I brought him down on deck, and clapped him into a box. In the morning I could feel that there was something in the box, but all the light was gone, and the box hadn't been opened long before the thing, whatever it was, was gone too." Had anybody but Cousin Silas given me this account, I should scarcely have believed him; and even in this case I had some little difficulty in not supposing that he must, in some way or other, have been deceived. Jack, however, did not bring us the fine weather we wished for. Daylight returned, and we were little better off than before. We nibbled some biscuit, as Jerry said, to keep our spirits up, and then had a look at the glass. It had risen two degrees. Still the sea ran very high. Jerry and I went at last on deck, followed by Surley. The captain and officers were there, for they had resolved to try and bring the ship to; as she was running a long way out of her course. This, after a time, was done, when the wind lulled, under a close-reefed fore-topsail. We rode after this much more pleasantly, and then the sea began to go down, and once more we could move about the deck without danger of being washed overboard.