"Well," continued the commander, his voice making use of the breeze as he stood aft of the group, "I could not have slept more than three or four hours on a stretch, when I was woke up by a fellow shoving his lantern in my face, and saying it wasn't me he wanted; for which I gave him a hearty objurgation, and turned over with a swing of the cot to go to sleep again. The sailor grumbled something about the parson being wanted for the captain, and all at once it flashed on my mind where we were, with the whole of last night's ticklish work--seeing that, hard rub as it was, it had clean left me for the time. "Try the aftermost berth, then," said I, slipping out in the dark to put on my trousers. The fact was, on going below to our state-room, I had found my own cot taken up by some one in the confusion; and as every door stood open at night in that latitude, I e'en made free with the nearest, which I knew was the missionary's. In a minute or two I heard Westwood meet the mate, who said he thought the captain would like to see him, and hoped they hadn't "disturbed the other gentleman." "Oh no, I daresay not," said Westwood, rather nervously, guessing, I daresay, what he was wanted for; while Finch slipped quietly past to listen at the state-room door, where both he and I might hear the "other gentleman," whoever he was, snoring pretty plain. When the first officer shut the door to, however, turned the key, and put it in his pocket, I nearly gave vent to a whistle.--"I see!" thought I; "but, my fine fellow, it seemed you never were meant for a good jailor, anyhow!" He was no sooner gone than I walked forward toward the captain's cabin, near the after-hatchway, anxious enough to see how the poor man was, since I had had such a share in bringing him to a point, one way or another. Westwood was standing against the light out of the open door, and I looked in along with him, at the cot slung high to the beams like a lump of shadow, the lamp striking across below it on all the captain's little affairs--his glazed hat and his wet coat, the names of two or three old books, even, hanging in shelves against the bulkhead--and into the little state-room off the cabin, where the surgeon was stooping to mix a draught. The hard-featured Scotch mate stood holding the captain's wrist with one clumsy flipper, as if trying to feel his pulse, fumbling about his own face with the other, and looking more concerned than I'd thought possible for him. "Well, I've slept a--good deal," said the captain, in a weak voice, putting up his hand slowly to rub his eyes, but seemingly quite composed, and knowing nothing of what had happened--which rid me of the horrid notion I could scarce help before, that he had known what he was about. His head was close shaved, and the look of a sailor clean gone off his face with the bluff, honest oak-colour it commonly had, till you'd have wished him decently in his bed thousands of miles off, with women