“Jack,” said I to a messmate of mine, as he stood looking at the skies, then at the sails, and finally at the water, with a graver air than I thought was at all consistent with the occasion or circumstances. “Well,” he replied. “What ails you? You seem as melancholy as if we were about to cast lots who should be eaten first. Are you well enough?” “I am hearty enough, thank Heaven,” he said, “but I don’t like this breeze.” “Don’t like the breeze!” said I; “why, mate, it is as good and kind a breeze as ever filled a sail. What would you have, a gale?” “No, no; I fear that.” “With such a ship, and such a set of hearty able seamen, I think we could manage to weather out the stiffest gale that ever whistled through a yard.” “That may be; I hope it is, and I really believe and think so.” “Then what makes you so infernally mopish and melancholy?” “I don’t know, but can’t help it. It seems to me as though there was something hanging over us, and I can’t tell what.” “Yes, there are the colours, Jack, at the masthead; they are flying over us with a hearty breeze.” “Ah! ah!” said Jack, looking up at the colours, and then went away without saying anything more, for he had some piece of duty to perform. I thought my messmate had something on his mind that caused him to feel sad and uncomfortable, and I took no more notice of it; indeed, in the course of a day or two he was as merry as any of the rest, and had no more melancholy that I could perceive, but was as comfortable as anybody. We had a gale off the coast of Biscay, and rode it out without the loss of a spar or a yard; indeed, without the slightest accident or rent of any kind. “Now, Jack, what do you think of our vessel?” said I. “She’s like a duck upon water, rises and falls with the waves, and doesn’t tumble up and down like a hoop over stones.” “No, no; she goes smoothly and sweetly; she is a gallant craft, and this is her first voyage, and I predict a prosperous one.” “I hope so,” he said. Well, we went on prosperously enough for about three weeks; the ocean was as calm and as smooth as a meadow, the breeze light but good, and we stemmed along majestically over the deep blue waters, and passed coast after coast, though all around was nothing but the apparently pathless main in sight. “A better sailer I never stepped into,” said the captain one day; “it would be a pleasure to live and die in such a vessel.” Well, as I said, we had been three weeks or thereabouts, when one morning, after the sun was up and the decks washed, we saw a strange man sitting on one of the water-casks that were on deck, for, being full, we were compelled to stow some of them on deck. [Illustration: The sudden appearance of the unknown visitant to the sailors.]