The wind proved fair, and for some weeks the weather was favorable;--then a terrific storm overtook them which lasted three days. Clark manifested due courtesy with his shipmates, and showed prompt obedience to the officers. The Captain eyed him closely, but during the storm he found him to be a prime sailor, and that he understood both the theory and practice of navigating a ship. The sailors in the forecastle thought he had queer ways, but all concurred in the opinion of the Captain and mates that he had smelt salt water before; and yet he was singular. When he first came aboard, they spoke of him as a “green ’un;” “a land-lubber.” “He might do to punish _grub_, but he’d never do in a storm.” The storm came on, and Jack Clark, as he was called, was found to be the best hand in the mess to work ship. He could run up the shrouds and out on the yard arms, like a monkey; hold on with one hand and take in a reef with the other in the quickest time. From the captain, whose keen look was on him as he walked the quarter-deck in sullen dignity, to the cabin boy whose laughing eye watched the new hand; all perceived he was a regular “old salt;” and if he had commanded a ship, as some one intimated, he had never crept in at the cabin window. But he was a strange fellow, for when grog time came John was seldom seen coming for his allowance. When fair weather came, and the sailors lay about the deck sunning themselves, and spinning long yarns, John Clark was reading in his berth. Thus days and weeks passed away, with the usual monotony of an old fashioned sea voyage. “What book is that Jack Clark reads so much?”--said one old salt to another as several hands lay basking on deck one day. “It’s the BIBLE,” was the reply from a pale looking sailor, who had just got out from a sick-berth, “for he read a long yarn out of it the other day to me.” “Hurrah,” shouted a wicked and witty fellow, who was listening;--“Is--Jack--what d’ call ’em--a PARSON?” “I don’t know about that,” said pale face, “but I think there are not many parsons about Lun-nun that know more about the Bible than Jack Clark. And I can tell ye more, shipmates, he can _pray_ too, and make his prayers as he goes along without the book; for I he’rn him not long sin’.” “You he’rn him pray!” shouted two or three voices in quick succession. “A sailor _pray_, and that without a book? Well, that’s more than the parsons can do.”