But the joy of the mate was something to wonder at. He was untiring. Clad only in a blue shirt, trousers, slippers, and a mangy old cap, he was ubiquitous; teaching, toiling, superintending, riding his hobby at full gallop. And when at last the day's work was ended, and we boys were putting away tar- and grease-pots, gathering shakings and sweeping decks, he sat perched upon a hen-coop on the weather side of the poop, smoking in perfect peace, beaming benignantly upon all his surroundings with the air of a man who was at the summit of earthly desires. Nor did his brow become clouded over again until we reached port, and the worry of tallying out the cargo devolved upon him. The second important duty that devolves upon the mate of a sailing ship is that of navigating the ship independently of the master, so that they may mutually check each other. There may possibly be some of my fellow-seamen who dissent from this, some masters who feel that it touches their dignity to be found out in an error by the mate; but I do not think any argument is needed to prove that they are entirely in the wrong. I have known skippers who would not allow the mate to assist in the navigating of the ship at all, as far as nautical astronomy went. They could not prevent him from keeping the dead reckoning, but he was dependent upon them entirely for the ship's position by celestial observation for entry in the log. Utterly wrong and foolish, as well as illegal; but when a man is so much a monarch, he is apt to go like that sometimes. In a well-conducted ship, the skipper and the mate assist each other with all observations where assistance is necessary, but they work up the results entirely apart, and then compare. If any error arises, it is thus almost certain to be discovered, and no properly-minded skipper should feel any umbrage at being bowled out in a blunder by his mate, as will almost certainly happen now and then. When all the observations are worked up to noon, the dead reckoning completed, the mate enters up all the details demanded by law in his log-book--that veracious record of day-to-day proceedings, which it is the mate's duty to keep recorded each day. There are few better tests of a mate's quality than the appearance of his log-book. Some men, while they write neatly and keep the book clean, will give for all remarks, wherever it is possible: "As yesterday. Wind steady, weather fine. So ends this twenty-four hours." They fill up just as few of the ruled spaces as they dare, put down the rate per hour by guess-work, and altogether ignore the purpose for which a log-book is ordered to be kept. Others will neglect the book's appearance, too, until it is hardly fit to be seen, while, as for information, it may truthfully be said that what little is given would better have been suppressed. But I have seen log-books that were invaluable, giving a most interesting account of the voyage in plain and simple language, while the