The Northumberland had experienced a terrible rounding of the
Horn. Bound from New Orleans to 'Frisco she had spent thirty days
battling with head-winds and storms--down there, where the
seas are so vast that three waves may cover with their amplitude
more than a mile of sea space; thirty days she had passed off
Cape Stiff, and just now, at the moment of this story, she was
locked in a calm south of the line.

Mr Button finished his tune with a sweep of the bow, and drew
his right coat sleeve across his forehead. Then he took out a sooty
pipe, filled it with tobacco, and lit it.

"Pawthrick," drawled a voice from the hammock above, from
which depended the leg, "what was that yarn you wiz beginnin' to
spin ter night 'bout a lip-me-dawn?"

"A which me-dawn?" asked Mr Button, cocking his eye up at the
bottom of the hammock while he held the match to his pipe.

"It vas about a green thing," came a sleepy Dutch voice from a
bunk.

"Oh, a Leprachaun, you mane. Sure, me mother's sister had one
down in Connaught."

"Vat vas it like?" asked the dreamy Dutch voice--a voice
seemingly possessed by the calm that had made the sea like a
mirror for the last three days, reducing the whole ship's company
meanwhile to the level of wasters.