ready--armed and equipped for any adventure, from the capture of a new
species of bug, to the conquest of Kamchatka!

As it was against all precedent to go to sea without looking at the
ship, Bush and I appointed ourselves an examining committee for the
party, and walked down to the wharf where she lay. The captain, a
bluff Americanised German, met us at the gangway and guided us through
the little brig from stem to stern. Our limited marine experience
would not have qualified us to pass an _ex cathedra_ judgment upon the
seaworthiness of a mud-scow; but Bush, with characteristic impudence
and versatility of talent, discoursed learnedly to the skipper upon
the beauty of his vessel's "lines" (whatever those were), her spread
of canvas and build generally,--discussed the comparative merits
of single and double topsails, and new patent yard-slings, and
reef-tackle, and altogether displayed such an amount of nautical
learning that it completely crushed me and staggered even the captain.

I strongly suspected that Bush had acquired most of his knowledge of
sea terms from a cursory perusal of Bowditch's _Navigator_, which
I had seen lying on the office table, and I privately resolved to
procure a compact edition of Marryat's sea tales as soon as I should
go ashore, and overwhelm him next time with such accumulated stores of
nautical erudition that he would hide his diminished head. I had a dim
recollection of reading something in Cooper's novels about a ship's
deadheads and cat's eyes, or cat-heads and deadeyes, I could not
remember which, and, determined not to be ignored as an inexperienced
landlubber, I gazed in a vague way into the rigging, and made a
few very general observations upon the nature of deadeyes and
spanker-booms. The captain, however, promptly annihilated me by
demanding categorically whether I had ever seen the spanker-boom