Next morning, after all, it was easy to feel the ship had really been hauled close on a wind. When we went up, the weather was clearing, though with a strongish gale from eastward, a heavy sea running, on which the Indiaman strained and creaked as she rose, rolling slowly to windward with her three double-reefed topsails strained full, then pitched head into it, as a cloud of foam and spray flew over her weather bow. It was quite early, the decks lately washed down, and the Indian judge walking the weather quarterdeck as grave and comfortable as if it was all right. The captain was with him, and two mates to leeward. "Sail O!" hailed a man on the foreyard. "Where away?" sung out the mate of the watch. "Broad abeam!" The captain went up to the poop, and I stood on the foremost carronade near the main rigging, where I could just see her now and then white against the blue haze between the hollows of the waves, as the Indiaman lifted. "There she is!" said I, thinking it was Westwood that stopped behind me; it was the judge, however, and as soon as I got down he stepped up, holding on with one hand to a backstay. The ship was rising after a pitch, every bulkhead and timber in her creaking, when all of a sudden I felt by my feet what all sailors feel the same way--she was coming up in the wind too fast to mount with the next wave, and a regular _comber_ it was going to be. I looked to the wheel--there was big Harry himself with a grin on his face, and his eye on Sir Charles, as he coolly gave her half a weather-spoke more, and then whirled it back again to meet her. "For heaven's sake, look out, sir!" exclaimed I. "Why so I do," said the judge, rather good-naturedly. "'Zounds! what's--" You felt the whole ship stop creaking for a moment, as she hung with the last wave--"Hold on!" shouted a mid--she gave a dull quiver from stem to stern, and I fairly pulled the judge close into the bulwark, just as smash, like thunder, came a tremendous green sea over us, three in one, washing down into the lee scuppers. The old gentleman staggered up, dripping like a poodle, and unable to see--one heard the water trickling through the skylights, and stepping away down stairs like a fellow with iron heels; while there was the sailor at the wheel grinding down his spokes in right earnest, looking aloft at the shaking fore-topsail, and the Indiaman seemingly doubtful whether to fall off or broach-to. Up she rose again, however, and drove round with her Turk-head in the air, then dip through the spray as gallantly as ever. "Send that lubber from the wheel, Mr Macleod!" said the captain angrily, when he came down, "he nearly broached the ship to just now!" The "ugly man" put on a double-gloomy face, and grumbled something about her "steering wild;" but the knowing squint he gave Jacobs, who relieved him, was enough to show me he was one of the best helmsmen aboard. As for the judge, he hadn't the least notion it was anything