TOM DEADLIGHT

During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the
Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains
of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the
sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British _Dreadnaught,
98,_ wandering in his mind, though with glimpses of sanity, and
starting up at whiles, sings by snatches his good-bye and last
injunctions to two messmates, his watchers, one of whom fans the
fevered tar with the flap of his old sou'wester. Some names and
phrases, with here and there a line, or part of one; these, in
his aberration, wrested into incoherency from their original
connection and import, he voluntarily derives, as he does the
measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife,
and now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last
flutterings of distempered thought.

Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,--
Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain,
For I've received orders for to sail for the
Deadman,
But hope with the grand fleet to see you
again.

I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail
aback, boys;
I have hove my ship to, for the strike
soundings clear--