Many lies are told of us sailors by landsmen, but when they call us a superstitious clan they speak the truth. Superstitious, indeed, are sailors. I am talking of the Jacks of my time; I understand that the mariner is more enlightened in these days. I looked at the little schooner anxiously. I felt no reluctance to board her; but, though I had told Greaves that I did not believe in dreams, I discovered, nevertheless, that this dream had communicated a particular significance to the little craft. I had meant to talk to him about my chat with Yan Bol at midnight, and the subject went out of my head while I looked at the schooner and thought of Greaves’ dream. “I will board her,” said I, “and enter her cabin.” “Oh, yes,” said he, “I shall want you to do that. My dream was so vivid that I shall ask you to take notice of the fittings of that cabin for the sake of corroboration, and let me be first with you----” He shut his eyes as one seeking strongly to realize his own imaginations, and said: “It is a square cabin with a square table directly under an oblong skylight. There is a chair at the head of the table. In that chair sat the skeleton, not answering to Milton’s magnificent fancy: “What seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. No, the thing was uncrowned. It was a skeleton, but it lived, and made as though it would deal the cards it held. Opposite is another chair; on either hand are lockers. There are sleeping berths at the foot of the companion ladder, and that’s all that I can remember,” said he, opening his eyes. Jimmy announced breakfast. Yan Bol came aft to take charge while I went below. The burly Dutchman looked at me meaningly, and then I recollected my talk with him; but I resolved to say nothing to the captain this side my excursion to the schooner. Before we sat down Jimmy received one of his lessons. There was a ham upon the table, and he called it a leg of mutton. I had long ago discovered that the boy was honestly wanting in the power to distinguish between articles of food. Sometimes I supposed he blundered on purpose to divert his master, who appeared to enjoy the concert that was part of the lesson, but I was now convinced that though he had the names of many varieties of meats, and even dishes, at his tongue’s end, he was utterly unable to correctly apply them. His confidence in his own indications was the extraordinary part of his misapplications. He spoke, for instance, of the ham as a leg of mutton as though quite sure; then to the first syllable of correction that fell from Greaves, and to a faint, uneasy groan which the dog always gave when Greaves spoke on these occasions--as though the noble beast knew that the boy had blundered and that the duet was inevitable--Jimmy stiffened himself into a soldier-like posture, nose in the air, hands up and down like a pump handle, and the dog looking at him ready to howl. The lesson ended, we sat down and fell to.