Presently the bewhiskered face of the boatswain showed at the head of the forecastle ladder. On spying me, he approached with the rough sea-salute of a drag at a lock of hair under his round hat. He had served as able seaman aboard the ship that I had been midshipman in, though before my time; this had come out in a chat, and now he had always a friendly greeting when I met him on deck. He was a sailor of a school that is almost extinct; a round-backed man of the merchantman’s slowness in his movements, yet probably as fine a sample of a boatswain as was ever afloat; with an eye that seemed to compass the whole ship in a breath, of a singular capacity of seeing into a man and knowing what he was fit for, most exquisitely and intimately acquainted with the machinery of a vessel; a delightful performer upon his silver pipe, out of which he coaxed such clear and penetrating strains that you would have imagined when he blew upon it a flight of canary birds had settled in the rigging round about him. The voice of the tempest was in his gruff cry of ‘All hands!’ and his face might have stood as a symbol for hard ocean weather, as the bursting cheeks of Boreas express the north wind. He carried a little length of tough but pliant cane in his hand, with which he would flog whatever stood next him when excited and finding fault with some fellow for ‘sogering,’ as it is called; and I once saw him catch a man of his own size by the scruff of the neck, and with his cane dust the hinder part of him as prettily as ever a schoolmaster laid it on to a boy. ‘At the wrong end of the ship, ain’t you, sir?’ he called to me as he approached in his strong hearty voice. ‘It’s all one to me,’ said I, laughing, ‘now that there’s no music in the like of that pipe of yours to set me dancing.’ ‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, fetching a deep breath. ‘I wonder if ever it’ll be my luck to knock off the sea and settle down ashore? I allow there’s more going to the life of a human being than the turning in of dead-eyes and the staying of masts _plumb_. By the way,’ added he, lowering his voice, ‘I’m afeerd there’s going to be a death aboard.’ ‘I hope not,’ said I; ‘it will be the first, and a little early, too. Who’s the sick man, bo’sun?’ ‘Why, a chap named Crabb,’ he answered. ‘I think you know him. I once took notice of a smile on your countenance as you stood watching him at the pumps.’ ‘What! do you mean that bow-legged carroty creature with no top to his nose and one eye trying to look astern?’ ‘Ay,’ said he; ‘that’s Crabb.’ ‘Dying, d’ye say, Mr. Smallridge?’ I considered an instant, and exclaimed: ‘Surely he was at the wheel from ten to twelve during the first watch last night?’ ‘So he was,’ answered the boatswain; ‘but he took ill in the middle watch, and the latest noose is that he’s a-dying rapidly.’ ‘What’s the poor fellow’s malady?’ said I.