'Tis a wondrous band of persons grand that nursery castle holds; With fearful beasts, and fearful birds, and witches too, and scolds; And you'd almost think it would frighten me to know, when I go to bed, That all these creatures live so close, almost at my very head. But it doesn't, you see, for I am King, and I hold the castle keys; Not one can stir from his settled place within unless I please. And, after all, they are safe enough, in spite of their wicked looks, For the castle walls of which I speak make the case where I keep my books. MARY KENT ON DECK. BY W. J. HENDERSON. The bark _Bunker Hill_, of Boston, homeward bound from Rio Janeiro, was staggering across as wild a stretch of the north Atlantic as ever frightened the heart of man. She had left Rio in early October, with a wafting of gentle winds among the swelling curves of her snowy studding-sails, and had floated northward to the equator in a sea of lucent blue that looked as if it had never known how to frown. Once across the line, the _Bunker Hill_ had run into the doldrums, and for ten long days had slatted the lax folds of her canvas against her tall yellow masts, until Captain Elisha Kent's heart turned sore and heavy within him. Then the northeast trades reached down into those latitudes, and the bark began to fight her way northward against a breeze that would not let her lie within four points of her course. But at length, early in November, she was somewhere to the northward and eastward of Bermuda, when the barometer began to go down with a steady rush, and the wind died completely out. A sickening roll of mountainous swell set in from the southeast, and the sky hardened down to a callous unbroken gray. Captain Kent walked the quarter-deck with his daughter Mary, a brown-cheeked, healthy girl of sixteen. Every day Mary took a trick at the wheel, for she could steer a compass course as well as any fore-mast hand. Better still, she could work out a ship's dead-reckoning, and "shoot" the sun for latitude or longitude, as well as her father, who had taught her how. "It's coming, lassie," he said to her, as they walked the reeling deck together. "Yea, father, there's a storm down there somewhere," she answered. "Well, I think we're as snug as we can be," he said, gazing aloft. The morning and forenoon watches had been spent in preparing for the gale, and with extra lashings on everything movable about the deck, and the bark down to a close-reefed main-topsail, a shred of spanker, and a storm jib, Captain Kent and his pretty little mate felt that all that was possible had been done. "I'd feel easier in my mind, though," said the Captain, "if one of my mates was able to be on deck." "I know I'm only a girl, father," said Mary, "but I think I've been of some use to you on this voyage."