Looking at the spencer, which is, of course, brailed up in such light weather, Mr. Rarx said, “Oh, those are great sails! Wait till it’s blowin’ and she under that and the topsails! They’ll stand a power o’ wind, but I’ve seen ’em blown away. I was second mate of a Nova Scotia ship, the ‘Mary L. Burrill,’ a few years ago, and we were bound across this time from Greenock to St. John in February, which it isn’t necessary for me to say anything more about the weather. We’d be’n lyin’ to for twenty hours under a goose-winged maintop-sail and spencer when the wind all at once rose to a perfect hurricane and hove us down to the hatches. And then the maintop-sail and that there spencer, sir, nearly as hard and thick as a plank, flew away like a muslin handkercheef; and though we had double gaskets on all the sails, four of ’em was blown loose and ripped off the yards like paper. Now, it’s blowin’ pretty hard when a lower maintop-sail goes, but nothin’ short of a hurricane can budge a new spencer. But no canvas ever made will stand a North Atlantic midwinter gale, and you hear me. We sighted a big White Star freighter this day, and she afterward reported the wind eighty miles an hour _between_ the squalls; not in ’em, mind. And if you want to see somethin’ to put joy in your heart, you ought to see these big White Star steamers in a heavy gale! I saw the ‘Cufic’ once comin’ across in another cyclone in the ‘J. B. Walker,’ and the way she kept clear of the seas was a caution. I’m a good enough American, but you can’t beat Harland and Wolff very much.” Mr. Rarx is an infinitely more agreeable man to talk to than the mate, who is the longest-winded and most tiresome old porpoise who ever spun a yarn. His only recommendations are his hideousness, which is positively attractive, and his strange, absurd facial contortions when he doesn’t intend to be funny. Sometimes during the first watch, when it is very dark, with the exception of the binnacle lamp which casts its rays upon him as he crosses its path, he is actually weird-looking. His voice, too, is as husky as a rusty hinge now, owing to a severe cold, and last night he vented some curious statements. Neither of us had said a word for maybe five minutes, I watching the compass card, he grinning and mouthing to himself in the moonlight. Presently he wormed himself over to where I stood, looked earnestly at me a few seconds and croaked,-- “You’ll see plenty of people in California with no teeth.” “How is that?” said I. “Dunno,” he replied; “they do say it’s the climate; anyhow, you’ll see lots with nothin’ but gums.” Then he crawled back to the other side, performed some further silent, facial acrobatics, returned, and wheezed out mysteriously, “You’ll be bothered with fleas there; they’re that plenty I always has a regular quadrille with ’em.”