"You are as far out of the way as we are here, down on the coast of Spain! The truth is just this. The Seven Dollies was lying among the rest of them, at anchor, below Canton, with the weather as fine as young girls love to see it in May, when Joe began to get down his yards, to house his masts, and to send out all his spare anchors. He even went so far as to get two hawsers fastened to a junk that had grounded a little ahead of him. This made a talk among the captains of the vessels, and some came on board to ask the reason. Joe told them he was getting ready for the typhoon; but when they inquired his reasons for believing there was to be a typhoon at all, Joe looked solemn, shook his head, and said he had reasons enough, but they were his own. Had he been explicit, he would have been laughed at, but the sight of an old grey-headed man, who had been at sea forty years, getting ready in this serious manner, set the others at work too; for ships follow each other's movements, like sheep running through a breach in the fence. Well, that night the typhoon came in earnest, and it blew so hard, that Joe Bunk said he could see the houses in the moon, all the air having blown out of the atmosphere." "But what has this to do with the tea-pot, Captain Truck?" "It is the life and soul of it. The captains in port were so delighted with Joe's foreknowledge, that they clubbed, and presented him this pot as a testimony of their gratitude and esteem. He'd got to be popular among them, Mr. Dodge, and that was the way they proved it." "But, pray, how did he know the storm was approaching?" asked Eve, whose curiosity had been awakened in spite of herself. "It could not have been that his 'foreknowledge' was supernatural." "That no one can say, for Joe was presbyterian-built, as we say, kettle-bottomed, and stowed well. The truth was not discovered until ten years afterwards, when the old fellow got to be a regular cripple, what between rheumatis', old age, and steaming. One day he had an attack of the first complaint, and in one of its most severe paroxysms, when nature is apt to wince, he roared three times, 'a typhoon! a typhoon! a typhoon!' and the murder was out. Sure enough, the next day we had a regular north-easter; but old Joe got no sign of popularity that time. And now, when you get to America, gentlemen and ladies, you will be able to say you have heard the story of Joe Bunk and his tea-pot." Thereupon Captain Truck took two or three hearty whiffs of the cigar, turned his face upwards, and permitted the smoke to issue forth in a continued stream until it was exhausted, but still keeping his head raised in the inconvenient position it had taken. The eye of the master, fastened in this manner on something aloft, was certain to draw other eyes in the same direction, and in a few seconds all around him were gazing in the same way, though none but himself could tell why.