accompaniment was contributed to this lively exercise on the part of the gentlemen promenaders, which otherwise in the glimmering sea-twilight, would have been striking in a different sense; by the efforts, namely, of a little band of amateur musicians under the break of the poop, who, with flute, clarionet, bugles, trombone, and violin, after sundry practisings by stealth, had for the first time assembled to play "Rule Britannia." What, indeed, with the occasional abrupt checks, wild flourishes, and fantastic variations caused by the ship's roll; and what with the attitudes overhead, of holding on refractory hats and caps, of intensely resisting and staggering legs, or of sudden pausing above the slope which one moment before was an ascent, there was additional force in the designation quaintly given to such an aspect of things by the foremast Jacks--that of a "cuddy jig." As the still increasing motion, however, shook into side-places this central group of cadets, civilians, and planters adrift, the grander features of the scene predominated: the broad mass of the ship's hull--looming now across and now athwart the streak of sinking light behind--drawn out by the weltering outline of the waters; the entire length of her white decks ever and anon exposed to view, with their parallel lines, their nautical appurtenances, the cluster of hardy men about the windlass, the two or three "old salts" rolling to and fro along the gangway, and the variety of forms blending into both railings of the poop. High out of, and over all, rose the lofty upper outline of the noble ship, statelier and statelier as the dusk closed in about her--the expanse of canvas whitening with sharper edge upon the gloom; the hauled-up clues of the main-course, with their huge blocks, swelling and lifting to the fair wind--and the breasts of the topsails divided by their tightened buntlines, like the shape of some full-bosomed maiden, on which the reef-points heaved like silken fringes, as if three sisters, shadowy and goddess-like, trod in each other's steps towards the deeper solitude of the ocean; while the tall spars, the interlacing complicated tracery, and the dark top-hamper showing between gave graceful unity to her figure; and her three white trucks, far overhead, kept describing a small clear arc upon the deep blue zenith as she rolled: the man at the wheel midway before the doors of the poop-cabin, with the light of the binnacle upon his broad throat and bearded chin, was looking aloft at a single star that had come out beyond the clue of the main-topsail.