At the moment when we first notice the brig, with the exception of the man at the wheel, and an individual walking up and down the poop smoking his pipe, at the first glance the brig's deck seemed deserted; still, on examining it carefully, fifteen men constituting the watch might have been seen sleeping in the bows, whom the slightest signal would be sufficient to awaken. "Halloh!" the walker said suddenly, as he halted near the binnacle, and addressed the helmsman; "I fancy the wind is shifting." "Yes, Master Lovel," the sailor answered, as he raised his hand to his woollen cap; "it has veered round two points." As the individual who answered to the pleasant name of Lovel is destined to play a certain part in the scenes we have undertaken to describe, we ask our readers' permission to draw his portrait. Physically, he was a man of about fifty, nearly as broad as he was tall, and bearing a striking resemblance to a barrel mounted on feet, but for all that gifted with far from common strength and activity; his violet nose, his thick lips, and highly-coloured face, with large red whiskers, gave him a jovial appearance, to which, however, two small grey and deep-set eyes, full of fire and resolution, imparted something skeptical and mocking. Morally, he was an honest, worthy man, open-hearted and loyal, an excellent sailor, and loving only two things, or rather beings, in the world: his Captain, who had brought him up, and, as he often said, had taught him to make his first splice by administering tobacco to him, and his ship, which he had seen built, which he had gone aboard when ready for sea, and had never quitted since. Master Lovel had never known either father or mother; hence he had made the brig and his Captain his family. All his loving faculties, a long time driven back and slumbering in his heart, were so fully concentrated on them, that what he felt for both went beyond the limits of a reasonable affection, and had acquired the veritable proportions of a gigantic fanaticism. However, the Captain, of whom we shall soon speak, amply requited the old sailor's friendship. "By the way, Lieutenant, I ask your pardon," the helmsman continued, doubtless encouraged by the manner in which his officer had spoken to him; "do you know that we have been making a precious queer navigation the last few days?" "Do you think so, lad?" "Hang it, sir, these continued tacks, and that boat we sent ashore yesterday, and has not yet returned--all that is rather singular." "Hum!" the officer said, without any other expression of his opinion. "Where may we be going, Lieutenant?" the sailor went on. "Are you very anxious to know?" Lovel asked him, with a half-sweet, half-bitter tone. "Well," the other said, as he turned his quid in his mouth, and sent forth a stream of blackish saliva, "I confess that I should not be sorry to know."