A rich ocean afternoon it was, and the beauty of it entered the little vessel which we were leaving astern of us even as a spirit might, vitalizing her with colors and with a radiance not her own, converting her into a gem-like detail for the embellishment of the wide, bare breast of sea. Greaves and I stood looking at her; but the instant I leveled the telescope the enchantment vanished, for then she showed as a crazy old brig once more, a cask in tow of her, her sails ill-set, and the bulky figure of Van Laar striding here and there, with many marks of agitation in his motions. “The captain mad and blind in the cabin,” said Greaves; “five men sick in the forecastle and the others crushed in spirits, forecastle fare for cabin fare, and bad at that; the water draining into the hold; and the vessel fearfully to the southward of her destination. I do not envy Van Laar.” However, long before we ran the little vessel out of sight, they had got her head pointed in a direction that was right for the British Channel, if not the Clyde. The breeze had freshened, she was leaning over, and the cask astern had been cut adrift. CHAPTER XI. THE “REBECCA.” Now, when Van Laar was gone all hands of us seemed to settle down very comfortably to the rough, hard, simple discipline of the sea-life. The more I saw of Greaves, the more I saw of the brig, the better I liked both. Over and over again I congratulated myself upon my good fortune. I seemed to trace it all to that gibbet on the sand hills. I know not why. What more ghastly, what more hideously ominous, you might say, could the mind of man imagine than a gibbet and a dead felon hanging from it in irons, and a mother receiving the horrible burthen of the beam from the fire-bright hand of the storm, and nursing the fearful object as though it were once again the babe that she had suckled? What more hideously ominous than such things could man ask of Heaven to initiate his career with, to inaugurate a new departure with? But that gibbet it was which kept me waiting when by walking I must have missed the press-gang and, for all I can now tell, have safely got me aboard the _Royal Brunswicker_. Be this as it will. I liked Greaves; I liked his little ship; I liked my position on board of her; and I could find no fault with the crew. The people of my watch ran about without murmurs. Yan Bol seemed to have the whole company well in hand. The spun-yarn winch was often a-going; we were a very clean ship; the complicated machinery aloft was carefully looked to; the long guns were kept bright. I had overhauled the slop-chest and taken what I wanted, and there lay, in a big sea-box which Greaves had somewhere fished out for me, as comfortable a stock of clothes as ever I could wish to sail out of port with.