“‘Nay,’ says I, ‘that’s more nor I can tell; but not being a Christian and only a poor ignoramus of a nigger, I suppose he’s afeard that the noise yonder is Davy Jones playing at single stick, and mayhap he may think the ould gemman is hauling his wind upon this tack, and may take his black muzzle for one of his imps. But that’s a pretty bobbery they’re kicking up, at all events, and now it’s going in the direction of the burying-ground.’ “‘I tell you what it is, Jack,’ says my messmate, who looked very cautiously round him, as if he was rowing guard in an enemy’s port, ‘I tell you what it is; I never thinks they give the devil his due, for between you and me I don’t know as he’s half so bad as many people makes him out. Our parson say he’s black, but the niggers paints him white; but for my part, I’m thinking that the colour of a ship’s paint goes for nothing. Then as for his horns, why they’re ugly looking to be sure;--[here the noise was right away in the burying-ground, and my messmate laid me fairly along side,]--but though they are ugly looking, I never heard of his doing any mischief by running stem on with them. And arter all, shipmate,’ he continued, ‘you must own there’s a great deal in fancy. Look at your Ingee grab-vessels, that run their noses out to the heel of the jib-boom, and carry all their bowsprit in-board! Now I call that sort o’rig neither ship-shape nor Bristol fashion, for a ship’s head is a ship’s head, and a ship’s bowsprit is a ship’s bowsprit; but if they go for to make a standing bowsprit of a ship’s head, then, I’m thinking, they are but lubberly rigged.’ “Now, messmates, you must own that his arguments was a bit of a poser; but I warn’t altogether satisfied with his backing and filling like a grenadier in a squall; and so, says I, ‘But what do you think of his tail, eh?’ “‘Why as for the matter of his tail,’ says he, ‘I’m thinking it’s a fundamental mistake altogether. The parsons say--and mayhap they’re right--that he cruises about privateering, because he’s got a roving commission, and every now and then he falls in with a heavenly convoy, and nips off with a prize, which he carries to his own dark place. Now as some of the craft are, no doubt, dull sailers, why, I suppose, he carries a hawser over his quarter to drag ’em out of the body of the fleet, and I’m thinking that in some dismal hour he has been seen with the fag-end towing astarn, and the fear of the beholder has convarted it into a tail.’ “Well, messmates, I own I was a bit staggered at the likelihoods of the thing, because, d’ye mind, I never could make out the use of the tail; but the tow-rope spoke for itself, so says I, ‘I tell you what it is, shipmate, you’ve just hove my thoughts slap aback and got my ideas in irons--but holloa, there’s a precious row.’