when you once caught his quick, unembarrassed glance, or heard his deep voice answering the quarter-deck on a dark night, in a squall, with a clear ring in its pitch, which the men used to say was worth a dozen trumpets. With all this, you felt that he ought to have been something more than a mere master’s mate, never doubting by his ways that he had commanded crafts of some sort in his time. The truth was, that he had abused or slighted his opportunities; though having been well brought up, not all the wear and tear of a hard life in every part of the globe, together with the slough which he had waded through, could prevent the thing from shining out. Apart from his seamanship—of that class which embraced all varieties of crafts and services—he possessed a knowledge of books, and a strength of imagination, which made you wonder still more at the subordinate post he held in the ship. As Guy Willful, one of our mess, afterward expressed himself—“though we all knew Harry Miller to be a gentleman, it was not until that blessed night when I knocked little Dick Afterblock into the lee-scuppers, that we found out the pinch of diamond-dust in the mate’s composition.” On the evening in question, after seeing the two friends shake hands, the party had seated themselves quietly round the mate, who had offered to spin a yarn that should last out the watch, when a voice from the forecastle sung out, that there was a large whale close aboard of the ship. Sure enough, there he was, close under the main chains, sending up a succession of regular old-fashioned spouts, for all the world, the true originals of those which every reflective reader will remember to have once viewed with wonder and awe among the prints of his spelling-book. These were attended by loud respiratory sounds, which were heard fore and aft the deck.