own fingers, that has stood under him in many a dark and trying hour, whilst the wild waves have dashed over them with relentless fury, then--then--the scuppers of his heart are unplugged and overflow with the soft droppings of sensibility. How often has he stood upon that deck and eyed the swelling sails, lest the breezes of heaven should “Visit their face too roughly!” How many hours has he stood at that helm and watched her coming up and falling off! and when the roaring billows have threatened to ingulf her in the bubbling foam of the dark waters, he has eased her to the sea with all the tender anxiety that a mother feels for her first-born child. With what pride has he beheld her top the mountain wave and climb the rolling swell, while every groan of labour that she gave carried a taut strain upon his own heart-strings! Place confidence in what he says, and he will use no deception; doubt his word, and he will indulge you with some of the purest rhodomontade that ingenious fancy can invent. He will swear that he had a messmate who knew the man in the moon, and on one occasion went hand-over-hand up a rainbow to pay him a visit. He himself was once powder-monkey in the Volcano bomb, and he will tell you a story of his falling asleep in the mortar at the bombardment of Toulon, and his _body_ being discharged from its mouth instead of a _carcass_. With all the precision of an engineer, he will describe his evolutions in the air when they fired him off, and the manner in which he was saved from being dashed to pieces in his fall. All this he repeats without a smile upon his countenance, and he expects you to believe it: but you may soon balance the account, for tell him what absurdity you will, he receives it with the utmost credulity and is convinced of its truth. His courage is undoubted, for he will stand on the deck undismayed amidst the blood and slaughter of battle; yet on shore, he is seized with indescribable apprehensions at the sight of a coffin. The wailings of distress find a ready passport to his heart; but to disguise the real motives which prompt immediate aid, he swears that the object of his charity does not deserve a copper, yet gives a pound with only this provision,--that the individual relieved does not bother him about gratitude. You may know him from a thousand; for though in his dress conspicuously neat, and his standing and running rigging in exact order, yet they are arranged with a certain careless ease, as if he had but just come down from reefing topsails. The truck at the mast-head does not sit better than his tarpaulin hat, neither does the shoe upon the pea of the anchor fit tighter than his long quartered pumps. Grog is his ambrosia, his _necktar_; and he takes it cold, without sugar, that he may have the full smack of the rum.