feller hears thunder! The clouds settle right down onto the mast-head,
black and thick, like the settlin's of an ink-bottle; the lightnin'
hisses an' cuts fore and aft; and corposants come flightin' down onto
the boom or the top, gret balls o' light; and the wind roars louder than
the seas; and the rain comes down in spouts,--it don't fall fur enough
to drop; you'd think heaven and earth was come together, with hell
betwixt 'em;--and then it'll all clear up as quiet and calm as a
Simsbury Sunday; and you wouldn't know it could be squally, if 'twan't
for the sail that you hadn't had a chance to furl was drove to ribbons,
and here an' there a stout spar snapped like a cornstalk, or the
bulwarks stove by a heavy sea. There's queer things to be heerd, too, in
them parts: cries to wind'ard like a drowndin' man, and you can't never
find him; noises right under the keel; bells ringin' off the land like,
when you a'n't within five hundred miles of shore; and curus hails out
o' ghost-ships that sails agin' wind an' tide.--Strange! strange! I
declare for't! seems as though I heerd my old mother a-singin' Mear
now!"

I saw Jackson was getting excited, so I gave him a little soothing
draught and walked away to give the nurse some orders. But he made me
promise to return and hear the story out; so, after half an hour's
investigation of the wards, I came back and found him composed enough to
permit his resuming where he had left off.

"Howsomever, Doctor, there wa'n't no smooth sailin' nor fair weather
with the cap'en; 'twas always squally in his latitude, and I begun to
get mutinous and think of desartin'. About eighteen months arter we sot
sail from Valparaiso, I hadn't done somethin' I'd been ordered, or I'd
done it wrong, and Cap'en Twist come on deck, ragin' and roarin', with
a handspike in his fist, and let fly at my head. I see what was comin',