Jimmy lit his pipe for a morning puff; climbing into his bunk, he dangled his short legs over the frowsy head of big Scouse who sat with his dejected poll bent under the upper bunk board, a fair sample of the despondent crowd of farmers who faced a Christmas Day of labor. "A hell of a Christmas Day, boys, A hell of a Christmas Day, For we are bound for the bloody Horn Ten thousand miles away." Jimmy rendered this little ditty of cheerfulness as Fred picked up the breakfast kids and started for the galley, while we turned out on the sun-splashed planks as the last of eight bells vibrated over the ship. She lay still in a near calm like a scene by Turner, all of her canvas hanging in picturesque festoons from the jackstays, where the starboard watch had cast off the courses and tops'ls, leaving them depending in their gear. The decks had not been washed down, in order to keep them dry, and the mate himself had turned out at four bells to start the ball rolling. Long bundles of the fine weather canvas were stretched on the decks ready for swaying aloft. Working like demons in the forenoon, and with all hands on deck after dinner, which was dispatched in haste, we had the courses, and in turn the tops'ls and light sails, lowered to the deck, and the gantlines rigged to hoist the summer canvas; this we sent aloft in record time. These old sails, soft and mellow, veterans of a dozen voyages, patched and repatched, with whole new cloths of a lighter grade here and there streaking the dull white-weathered surface, were as smooth and pliable as a baby's bonnet. On some of them, the fore upper tops'l especially, we found records of the many crews who had handled them before. "James Brine, Liverpool. On his last voyage," was one inscription. I hope Brine achieved his end and stayed ashore. A date under this was hardly decipherable but may have been Jan., June, or July, the day the eighth, and the year 1893. Bending a sail calls for the nicest knowledge; the passing of the head earing must be done in a certain manner, so the head of the sail will hold well up on the yard arm; the gear, consisting of tacks, sheets, clew garnets, and buntlines, in the case of a "course," not to mention the leechlines, and bowlines, must all be rove and rigged just so. The "robands" or pieces of rope yarn, are all looped through the "head holes" ready for bending the sail to the iron jackstay on the yard, and when a sailor does the job, all goes as smooth as a wedding when the parson knows his job.