The ship was this morning a very grand show of canvas. Her yards were braced just a little forward; the weather clew of the mainsail was up; all studdingsails to port were on her, and aloft she had something of the look of a line-of-battle ship with her immensely square yards rising to the truck, the great hoist of main topsail, with its four bands of reef-points, enormously thick shrouds and big tops, and all the heavens over the bow and far to port hidden by space upon space of cloth, effulgent in the sunshine, and flinging a light of their own upon the blue air in a sort of liquid gushing of radiance off their edges, trembling into an exquisite delicacy of outline like a thinness of ice against the sky. At the peak flew the red ensign half-mast high, languidly floating in rich brand-new folds of sunny crimson to the quiet breathing of the wind over the quarter. It was a hint of what was to come, and you noticed the influence of it upon the passengers, who talked in subdued voices, and walked thoughtfully, as though it were the Sabbath and Divine service was shortly to be held. There was nothing in sight the wide and gleaming circle round, saving the shoulders of a group of huge cream-coloured clouds down in the west, looking like the mountainous loom of a snow-whitened country. Shortly before ten o’clock, Smallridge, taking his stand upon the forecastle head, applied his silver whistle to his lips, and sent the shrill metallic summons ringing throughout the length of the ship, following it with a deep-chested hurricane roar of ‘All hands ’tend funeral.’ The Jacks had been off work since breakfast time, and to the boatswain’s melodious invitation they came tumbling out of the forecastle all in the spruce warm-weather attire of those days--flowing white trousers, coloured shirts, round jackets, collars lying open to half way down their breasts, half a fathom of silk handkerchief worked up into the sailor’s knot, and, for the most part, round hats of straw, shaped like a tall hat of to-day, but the crown considerably lower. They came soberly rolling along in bunches of three and four, and massed themselves forward of the gangway and round about the hatchway, and the huge pillar of mast shooting up abaft it. In the foreground stood Smallridge, with three rows of cloth buttons to his jacket, his storm-beaten face luminous with recent rinsing, and his cheeks framed by a pair of upright collars such as the negro minstrel of our time loves to embellish his blackened countenance with. Next him was the sailmaker, his small blood-stained eyes restlessly rolling themselves aft upon the people on the poop from either side his high Roman nose. By his side was the cook, a fat, bilious-looking man; and close to him the carpenter, a withered old Scotchman, with a face of leather, puckered into a thousand wrinkles by time, weather, and trials of temper.