"From his Affecshunate mother who prays, For you evry day, Amen," whispers Kentucky, presently, very soft. "The book's tore up. Mr. Whitmarsh wadded his old gun with it. But I remember." Then said he: "It's 'most bedtime to home. She's setting in a little rocking-chair,--a green one. There's a fire, and the dog. She sets all by herself." Then he begins again: "She has to bring in her own wood now. There's a gray ribbon on her cap. When she goes to meetin' she wears a gray bunnet. She's drawed the curtains and the door is locked. But she thinks I'll be coming home sorry some day,--I'm sure she thinks I'll be coming home sorry." Just then there comes the order, "Port watch ahoy! Tumble up there lively!" so I turns out, and the lad turns in, and the night settles down a little black, and my hands and head are full. Next day it blows a clean, all but a bank of gray, very thin and still,--about the size of that cloud you see through the side window, Tom,--which lay just abeam of us. The sea, I thought, looked like a great purple pincushion, with a mast or two stuck in on the horizon for the pins. "Jake's poetry," the boys said that was. By noon that little gray bank had grown up thick, like a wall. By sundown the cap'n let his liquor alone, and kept the deck. By night we were in chop-seas, with a very ugly wind. "Steer small, there!" cries Whitmarsh, growing hot about the face,--for we made a terribly crooked wake, with a broad sheer, and the old hull strained heavily,--"steer small there, I tell you! Mind your eye now, McCallum, with your foresail! Furl the royals! Send down the royals! Cheerily, men! Where's that lubber Kent? Up with you, lively now!" Kentucky sprang for'ard at the order, then stopped short. Anybody as knows a royal from an anchor wouldn't have blamed the lad. I'll take oath to't it's no play for an old tar, stout and full in size, sending down the royals in a gale like that; let alone a boy of fifteen year on his first voyage. But the mate takes to swearing (it would have turned a parson faint to hear him), and Kent shoots away up,--the great mast swinging like a pendulum to and fro, and the reef-points snapping, and the blocks creaking, and the sails flapping to that extent as you wouldn't consider possible unless you'd been before the mast yourself. It reminded me of evil birds I've read of, that stun a man with their wings; strike _you_ to the bottom, Tom, before you could say Jack Robinson. Kent stuck bravely as far as the cross-trees. There he slipped and struggled and clung in the dark and noise awhile, then comes sliding down the back-stay. "I'm not afraid, sir," says he; "but I cannot do it." For answer Whitmarsh takes to the rope's-end. So Kentucky is up again, and slips and struggles and clings again, and then lays down again. At this the men begin to grumble a little low.