“My,” said Bill Chestree, the captain of the foretop, “what is can’t be helped, old Fizgig; old Rayo has gone down, and”--“Old Rayo be d----d, Master Bill,” said the man; “but may I be flogged, if I han’t forgotten half a pound of negro head baccy in Dick Catgut’s bag.” “Launch ahoy!” hailed a half drunken voice from one of the boats astern of us. “Hillo,” responded the coxswain. The poor skipper even pricked up his ears. “Have you got Dick Catgut’s fiddle among ye?” This said Dick Catgut was the corporal of marines, and the prime instigator of all the fun amongst the men. “No, no,” said several voices, “no fiddle here.” The hail passed round among the other boats, “No fiddle.” “I would rather lose three days grog than have his fiddle mislaid,” quoth the man who pulled the bow oar. “Why don’t you ask Dick himself?” said our coxswain. “Aye--true enough--Dick, Dick Catgut!” but no one answered. Alas! poor Dick was nowhere to be found; he had been mislaid as well as his fiddle. He had broken into the spirit room, as it turned out, and having got drunk, did not come to time when the frigate sunk. Our ship, immediately after the frigate’s crew had been bestowed, and the boats got in, hoisted the Commodore’s light, and the following morning we fell in with the Torch, off the east end of Jamaica, which, after seeing the transports safe into Kingston, and taking out me and my people, bore up through the Gulf, and resumed her cruising ground on the edge of the Gulf stream, between 25 degrees and 30 degrees north latitude. CHAPTER III.--The Quenching of the Torch. “Then rose from sea to sky, the wild farewell.” BYRON, DON JUAN, II. 409 The evening was closing in dark and rainy, with every appearance of a gale from the westward, and the weather had become so thick and boisterous, that the lieutenant of the watch had ordered the look-out at the mast-head down on deck. The man, on his way down, had gone into the maintop to bring away some things he had placed there in going aloft, and was in the act of leaving it, when he sung out,--“A sail on the weather-bow.” “What does she look like?” “Can’t rightly say, sir; she is in the middle of the thick weather to windward.” “Stay where you are a little.--Jenkins, jump forward, and see what you can make of her from the foreyard.” Whilst the topman was obeying his instructions, the look-out again hailed “She is a ship, sir, close-hauled on the same tack----the weather clears, and I can see her now.”