as blue as summer all the time, only jest round the dip on’t there’s allers a hull fleet o’ hazy round-topped clouds, so thin you can see the moon rise through ’em; and the waves go ripplin’ off the cut-water as peaceful as a mill-pond, day and night.  Squalls is sca’ce some times o’ the year; but when there is one, I tell you a feller hears thunder!  The clouds settle right down onto the mast-head, black and thick, like the settlin’s of an ink-bottle; the lightnin’ hisses an’ cuts fore and aft; and corposants come flightin’ down onto the boom or the top, gret balls o’ light; and the wind roars louder than the seas; and the rain comes down in spouts,—­it don’t fall fur enough to drop; you’d think heaven and earth was come together, with hell betwixt ’em;—­and then it’ll all clear up as quiet and calm as a Simsbury Sunday; and you wouldn’t know it could be squally, if ’twan’t for the sail that you hadn’t had a chance to furl was drove to ribbons, and here an’ there a stout spar snapped like a cornstalk, or the bulwarks stove by a heavy sea.  There’s queer things to be heerd, too, in them parts:  cries to wind’ard like a drowndin’ man, and you can’t never find him; noises right under the keel; bells ringin’ off the land like, when you a’n’t within five hundred miles of shore; and curus hails out o’ ghost-ships that sails agin’ wind an’ tide.—­Strange! strange!  I declare for’t! seems as though I heerd my old mother a-singin’ Mear now!”

I saw Jackson was getting excited, so I gave him a little soothing draught and walked away to give the nurse some orders.  But he made me promise to return and hear the story out; so, after half an hour’s investigation of the wards, I came back and found him composed enough to permit his resuming where he had left off.

“Howsomever, Doctor, there wa’n’t no smooth sailin’ nor fair weather with the cap’en; ’twas always squally in his latitude, and I begun to get mutinous and think of desartin’.  About eighteen months arter we sot sail from Valparaiso, I hadn’t done somethin’ I’d been ordered, or I’d done it wrong, and Cap’en Twist come on deck, ragin’ and roarin’, with a handspike in his fist, and let fly at my head.  I see what was comin’, and put my arm up to fend it off; and gettin’ the blow on my fore-arm, it got broke acrost as quick as a wink, and I dropped.  So they picked me up, and havin’ a mate aboard who knew some doctorin’, I was spliced and bound up, and put under hatches on the sick-list.  I tell you I was dog-tired them days, lyin’ in my berth, hearin’ the rats and mice scuttle round the bulkheads and skitter over the floor.  I couldn’t do nothin’, and finally I bethought myself of Hetty’s Bible and contrived to get it out o’ my chist,—­and when I could get a bit of a glim I’d read it.  I’m a master-hand to remember things, and what I read over and over in that ’are dog-hole of cabin never got clean out of my head, no, nor never will; and when the Lord above calls all hands on deck to pass muster, ef I’m ship-shape afore him, it’ll be because I follered his signals and l’arnt ’em out of that ’are log.  But I didn’t foller ’em then, nor not for a plaguy long cruise yet!