“Most of you have sailed with me for months, and know I ‘crack on’ every sail my ship can carry at all times. Now, listen well to what I say. This old gentleman at my side, my kinsman and friend, and I have those in Boston whom we love, and we have learned tonight that one of them is dying and one is in danger. We must reach Boston at the earliest moment possible. Within the hour I’ll heave my anchor up and sail, such carrying of sail, in weather fair or foul, no sailor yet has seen as I shall do. My masts may go. I’ll take the chance of tearing them out of the ship if I can but gain one hour. No man must sail with me in this wild race unwillingly or unaware of what I intend to do. Therefore, from mate to cabin-boy, let him who is unwilling to share the perils of this trip step forward, take his wages and go over the side into the small boat that lies beside the ship.” The skipper Stopped speaking and waited; for some seconds there was a scuffling of bare feet and shoving among the knot of seamen, but no man said aught nor did any one step forward. At last the impatient master cried out, “Well, what’s it to be! Can no man among you find his tongue?” Then came more shuffling and shoving and half audible exclamations of “Say it yourself!” “Why don’t you answer the skipper?” Finally old Brice moved around from behind the captain and stood between him and the men. Then addressing the master but looking at the crew, he said, “I think, sir, the men wish to say, that they are Yankee sailors, and see you and Mr. Dunlap half scuttled by your sorrow and that they will stick by you, and be d——n to the sail you carry! Is that it, men?” A hoarse hurrah answered the first officer’s question. “The mate says right enough; we’ll stick to the ship and skipper,” came in chorus from the brazen lungs of the crew. Such scampering about the deck was never seen before on board the “Adams” as that of the next thirty minutes. When the crew manned the capstan and began hoisting the anchor a strange black bundle, with gleaming eyes, came tumbling over the bow. The startled crew sprang away from what they took to be a huge snake, but seeing, when it gathered itself together and stood upright, that it was an old witch of a black woman, they bawled out for the mate. The old termagant fought like a wild-cat, scratching and tearing at the eyes of the men as they bundled her over the ship’s side and into the canoe in which she had come from the shore. All the time the hag was raving, spitting and swearing by all kinds of heathenish divinities that she would go to Boston to see “my grandchild,” and muttering all sorts of imprecations and incantations, in the jargon of the West Indies, upon the heads of all who attempted to prevent her.