upon the main-yard there! Look alive at the
weather earring! Cheery, my boys! Let go
the sheet now! Stand by at the braces, you!
With a will, aloft there! Belay, starboard
watch! Fifer! Come aft, fifer, and give 'em
a tune! Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand
—smallest boy ever seen—big lump on temple,
having lately fallen down on a paving-stone—
gives 'em a tune with all his might and main.
Hooroar, fifer! With a will, my lads! Tip
'em a livelier one, fifer! Fifer tips 'em a
livelier one, and excitement increases. Shake
'em out, my lads! Well done! There you
have her! Pretty, pretty! Every rag upon her
she can carry, wind right astarn, and ship cutting
through the water fifteen knot an hour!

At this favourable moment of our voyage,
I gave the alarm "A man overboard!" (on the
gravel), but he was immediately recovered, none
the worse. Presently, I observed the Skipper
overboard, but forbore to mention it, as he
seemed in no wise disconcerted by the accident.
Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as
an amphibious creature, for he was so perpetually
plunging overboard to look up at the hands
aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of the
ocean than on deck. His pride in his crew on
those occasions was delightful, and the conventional
unintelligibility of his orders in the ears
of uncommercial land-lubbers and loblolly boys,
though they were always intelligible to the
crew, was hardly less pleasant. But we couldn't
expect to go on in this way for ever; dirty
weather came on, and then worse weather, and
when we least expected it we got into
tremendous difficulties. Screw loose in the chart
perhaps—something certainly wrong somewhere—
but here we were with breakers ahead,
my lads, driving head on, slap on a lee shore!
The Skipper broached this terrific announcement
in such great agitation, that the small fifer, not
fifeing now, but standing looking on near the
wheel with his fife under his arm, seemed for
the moment quite unboyed, though he speedily
recovered his presence of mind. In the trying
circumstances that ensued, the Skipper and the
crew proved worthy of one another. The Skipper
got dreadfully hoarse, but otherwise was master
of the situation. The man at the wheel did
wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were turned
up to wear ship; and I observed the fifer, when
we were at our greatest extremity, to refer to
some document in his waistcoat-pocket, which
I conceived to be his will. I think she struck.
I was not myself conscious of any collision, but
I saw the Skipper so very often washed overboard
and back again, that I could only impute
it to the beating of the ship. I am not enough
of a seaman to describe the manœuvres by which
we were saved, but they made the Skipper very
hot (French polishing his mahogany face) and
the crew very nimble, and succeeded to a
marvel; for, within a few minutes of the first
alarm, we had wore ship and got her off, and
were all a-tauto—which I felt very grateful
for: not that I knew what it was, but that I
perceived that we had not been all a-tauto
lately. Land now appeared on our weather-bow,
and we shaped our course for it, having the
wind abeam, and frequently changing the man at
the helm, in order that every man might have his
spell. We worked into harbour under prosperous
circumstances, and furled our sails, and squared
our yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome,
and so our voyage ended. When I complimented
the Skipper at parting on his exertions
and those of his gallant crew, he informed me
that the latter were provided for the worst, all
hands being taught to swim and dive; and he
added that the able seaman at the main-topmast
truck especially, could dive as deep as he could
go high.

The next adventure that befel me in my visit
to the Short-Timers, was the sudden apparition
of a military band. I had been inspecting the
hammocks of the crew of the good ship, when I
saw with astonishment that several musical
instruments, brazen and of great size, appeared to
have suddenly developed two legs each, and to
be trotting about a yard. And my astonishment
was heightened when I observed a large drum,
that had previously been leaning helpless against
a wall, taking up a stout position on four legs.
Approaching this drum and looking over it, I
found two boys behind it (it was too much for
one), and then I found that each of the brazen
instruments had brought out a boy, and was
going to discourse sweet sounds. The boys—
not omitting the fifer, now playing a new
instrument—were dressed in neat uniform, and
stood up in a circle at their music-stands, like
any other Military Band. They played a march
or two, and then we had Cheer boys, Cheer,
and then we had Yankee Doodle, and we
finished, as in loyal duty bound, with God Save
the Queen. The band's proficiency was
perfectly wonderful, and it was not at all
wonderful that the whole body corporate of
Short-Timers listened with faces of the liveliest
interest and pleasure.

What happened next among the Short-Timers?
As if the band had blown me into a
great class-room out of their brazen tubes, in a
great class-room I found myself now, with the
whole choral force of Short-Timers singing the
praises of a summer's day to the harmonium,
and my small but highly-respected friend the
fifer blazing away vocally, as if he had been
saving up his wind for the last twelvemonth;
also the whole crew of the good ship Nameless
swarming up and down the scale as if they had
never swarmed up and down the rigging. This
done, we threw our whole power into God
bless the Prince of Wales, and blessed his
Royal Highness to such an extent that, for my
own Uncommercial part, I gasped again when it
was over. The moment this was done, we
formed, with surpassing freshness, into hollow
squares, and fell to work at oral lessons, as if
we never did, and had never thought of doing,
anything else.

Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals
into which the Uncommercial Traveller would
have been betrayed but for a discreet reticence,