"You had better keep awake in that main-top;" thundered the lieutenant of the deck, through his trumpet, "you have lost one of your number already by your sleeping." All this was "Hebrew Greek" to us, but in a short time the sentry at the cabin door "reported" eight bells; the larboard watch was called, the wheel, look-outs, and tops relieved, and the mystery of the loss of "one of our number" fully explained. "What did you heave Old Cuff out of the top for?" said the first one of the larboard watch, whose head came through the "lubber's hole." "When did Old Cuff, fall from aloft?" said the next that ascended to the "sky-parlor." "Old Cuff is done for," said the third that came up. "He has broke his back-bone short off;" said a fourth, with his jacket over one shoulder. "Yes, and four of his ribs to boot;" added a fifth, who was determined the story should not want particulars. "The doctor says he won't live till morning," said a sixth, who had not yet hove in sight, speaking below the top, as Hamlet senior's ghost does under the stage. By this time, the whole of the alarming intelligence was fairly expended, the remaining eight, who made up the sum total of the quarter watch, having no farther particulars of consequence to communicate, the first six who came up having already broken every bone in poor Old Cuff's body, and "abridged his doleful days" to boot. By dint of cross questioning, we made shift to ascertain, that about two o'clock, or four bells, Old Cuff had rolled away from under my head, and over the top brim. Fortunately he fell across the fore-topmast studding-sail tack, which broke two of his ribs and his fall, and thence he had gently canted over, and alighted upon the quarter-deck hammock-nettings, nearly knocked overboard the half-asleep main-topman who was perched up there as a look-out. He recovered, however, in two or three weeks, in spite of the doctor's prognostication.