It may be supposed by some that such a conversation and prediction would have a gloomy effect on the minds of persons with such vivid imaginations as seamen; but, fortunately, (or unfortunately, whichever it may be,) in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred neither good nor evil makes any more lasting impression on their minds than water does upon a duck’s back. For the moment, they become absorbed in the topic of that moment; but look at them an instant later, you will see the same careless bearing, and hear the merry jest passed around as gleefully as ever. Verily, there is need of a “sweet little cherub to sit up aloft, and keep up a watch over the life of Jack Tar”; for he will not look out for himself. This very thoughtlessness, however, renders him all the more useful aboard ship. Many times, if he should pause to think of the danger to himself in the performance of a particular duty, his hesitation would bring destruction upon the ship and its inmates. For instance, it is blowing heavily: a topsail is clewed up--the ship will not bear it, and the sail is flapping in a manner which will destroy it in a few minutes, for it is sweeping abaft the yard. (Now this is the only topsail that can be depended upon in case the ship on arriving at the coast should be jammed on a lee-shore: for then nothing could be saved except by its proper management and use.) Jack knows that under precisely these circumstances hundreds of seamen have been torn from the foot-rope while in the line of their duty, and hurled into the sea, when the fury of the elements precluded the possibility of an attempt to save them. Perchance in his last ship such an accident occurred: mayhap his messmate was swept from the same yardarm he himself was on. But he does not stop to think of all this: he springs into the rigging, climbs to the yard, gets a foothold, and (at every step forced to throw the sail over his head) arrives at the earing, when his task becomes comparatively easy. Little by little he gathers up, passing his gasket, and securing the sail, until all is snugly lashed along the yard in such a manner that the wind has no effect upon it. His task now done, he descends to the deck, as if nothing more than the most ordinary occupation had been his; and he is ready and willing to go aloft again, if necessity demands it.