said there was some one to lose his mess before long; however, the cook made a dead set to hook the infernal old monster, and at last he did contrive to get him fast, with a piece of pork large enough for supper to the larboard watch. All hands tailed on to the line, and with much ado we got his snout over the taffrail, till one could look down his throat, and his tail was like to smash in the starn windows; when of a sudden, snap goes the rope where it spliced to the chain, down went the shark into the water with a tremendous splash, and got clear off, hook, chain, bait an' all. We saw no more of him, though; and by sunset we had a bit of a light breeze, that began to take us off pleasantly. "We had had full moon nearly the night before, and this night, I remember, 'twas the very pearl of moonlight--the water all of a ripple sparkling in it, almost as blue as by day; the sky full o' white light; and the moon as large as the capstan-head, but brighter than silver. You might ha' said you saw the very rays of it come down to the bellies of the sails, and sticking on the same plank in the deck for an hour at a time, as the ship surged ahead. Old Dido, the cook, had a fashion of coming upon deck of a moonlight night, in warm latitudes, to sleep on top o' the spars; he would lie with his black face full under it, like a lizard basking in the sun. Many a time the men advised him against it, at any rate to cover his face; for, if it wouldn't spoil, they said, he might wake up blind, or with his mouth pulled down to his shoulder, and out of his mind to boot. It wasn't the first time neither, sir, I've known a fellow moonstruck in the tropics, for 'tis another guess matter altogether from your hazy bit o' white paper yonder: why, if you hang a fish in it for an hour or two, 'twill stink like a lucifer match, and be poison to eat. Well, sir, that night, sure enough, up comes Dido with a rug to lie upon, and turns in upon the spars under the bulwarks, and in five minutes he was fast asleep, snoring with his face to the moon. So the watch, being tricky inclined ways on account of the breeze, took into their heads to give him a fright. One got hold of a paint-pot out of the half-deck, and lent him a wipe of white paint with the brush all over his face; Dido only gave a grunt, and was as fast as ever. The next thing was to grease his wool, and plaster it up in shape of a couple o' horns. Then they drew a bucket of water, and set it on the deck alongside, for him to see himself. When our watch came on deck, at eight bells, the moon was as bright as ever in the west, and the cook stretched out like Happy Tom on the spars, with his face slued round to meet it. In a little the breeze began to fall, and the light canvass to flap aloft, till she was all of a shiver, and the topsails sticking in to the masts, and shaking out again, with a clap that made the boom-irons rattle. At last she wouldn't answer her wheel, and the