bells there below;" at last started me from a troubled doze.

I sprang from my hammock, and would have lighted my pipe. But the
forecastle lamp had gone out. An old sea-dog was talking about sharks
in his sleep. Jarl and our solitary watch-mate were groping their way
into their trowsers. And little was heard but the humming of the
still sails aloft; the dash of the waves against the bow; and the
deep breathing of the dreaming sailors around.



CHAPTER VII
A Pause


Good old Arcturion! Maternal craft; that rocked me so often in thy
heart of oak, I grieve to tell how I deserted thee on the broad deep.
So far from home, with such a motley crew, so many islanders, whose
heathen babble echoing through thy Christian hull, must have grated
harshly on every carline.

Old ship! where sails thy lone ghost now? For of the stout Arcturion
no word was ever heard, from the dark hour we pushed from her fated
planks. In what time of tempest, to what seagull's scream, the
drowning eddies did their work, knows no mortal man. Sunk she
silently, helplessly, into the calm depths of that summer sea,
assassinated by the ruthless blade of the swordfish? Such things have
been. Or was hers a better fate? Stricken down while gallantly
battling with the blast; her storm-sails set; helm manned; and every
sailor at his post; as sunk the Hornet, her men at quarters, in some