always this horrible merman, with his shark's jaws and his flaming tiara, and poor Jacob Fell lying dead in his messmate's arms. But methinks I hear some nautical reader exclaim, "All stuff!" who ever heard of two reefers telling their dreams, and chattering on the sacred precincts of the quarter-deck of one of her Majesty's frigates, like a guinea-pig and an embryo cadet on the quarter-deck of a Bengal trader? Pardon, my noble sea-_hossifer_, but you must remember that the _Old Lucifer_ was not the crack frigate--not the _Eos_, six-and-thirty, but only a small frigate; and that, although she was blessed with a real martinet of a first-lieutenant, yet, in point of discipline, she was like most jackass frigates and sloops of war, _et hoc genus omne_, little better than a privateer; besides, our Portuguese supernumerary lieutenant was the officer of the watch, and Ralph had completely got the weather-gage of him, and could do what he liked with the "pavior." However, the dream was told me by Ralph nearly in the very words in which I have given it, though, perhaps, not all on deck, for the subject was renewed over our allowance of grog in the midshipmen's berth after dinner, for nothing could drive it out of Rattlin's head, and he was all that day singularly silent and _distrait_ on all other subjects. That evening I had the first dog-watch; and when Rattlin came on deck at six o'clock to relieve me, the sun was setting in a red and angry-looking sky, and there was every symptom of a squally night. "Well, Percy," he said, "this sunset reminds me of my dream. I really think old Davy will be among us before my watch is out." "Very well, Jemmy, I'll come on deck at seven bells and see," I replied, as I ran down the companion for an hour's snooze, for, as my nautical readers will be aware, I had the middle watch. Mindful of my promise, as soon as I heard seven bells struck, I roused myself from the locker on which I had stretched myself, and went on deck, and I was immediately struck with the perfect coincidence of the weather, and all the accessories to those described by Rattlin in his dream. The ship had just been put about, and was now close hauled on the starboard tack; the night pitch dark, the breeze freshening from the northeast, and the sea beginning to assume that luminous appearance so frequently observable under a dark sky and with a fresh breeze, but which, though generally attributed to myriads of luminous animalculæ, has never yet been fully and satisfactorily accounted for. I joined my friend Rattlin, and said to him, in a low tone, "This looks, indeed, like your dream." "Yes," he answered, looking very pale and nervous; "it does, indeed. I don't know what to make of it. Davy Jones will certainly lay hold of some of us to-night." At this moment the first-lieutenant came on deck, followed by the captain, whose sallow countenance, as he stood abaft the binnacle, and the light fell on his face, looked rather more ghastly than usual.