glass pudding; and a glass dog, with a red mouth, was barking at him;
while the captain in a glass cap was smoking a glass cigar on the
quarterdeck. He was leaning against the bulwark, with one hand to his
head; perhaps he was unwell, for he looked very glassy out of the eyes.

The name of this curious ship was La Reine, or The Queen, which was
painted on her stern where any one might read it, among a crowd of glass
dolphins and sea-horses carved there in a sort of semicircle.

And this Queen rode undisputed mistress of a green glassy sea, some of
whose waves were breaking over her bow in a wild way, I can tell you,
and I used to be giving her up for lost and foundered every moment, till
I grew older, and perceived that she was not in the slightest danger in
the world.

A good deal of dust, and fuzzy stuff like down, had in the course of
many years worked through the joints of the case, in which the ship was
kept, so as to cover all the sea with a light dash of white, which if
any thing improved the general effect, for it looked like the foam and
froth raised by the terrible gale the good Queen was battling against.

So much for La Reine. We have her yet in the house, but many of her
glass spars and ropes are now sadly shattered and broken,--but I will not
have her mended; and her figurehead, a gallant warrior in a cocked-hat,
lies pitching headforemost down into the trough of a calamitous sea
under the bows--but I will not have him put on his legs again, till I get
on my own; for between him and me there is a secret sympathy; and my
sisters tell me, even yet, that he fell from his perch the very day I
left home to go to sea on this my first voyage.