“A half-rigged brig, with her fore-top-gallant-mast fidded abaft, a double martingale, and a standing gaft;” observed the methodical and technical mariner, as another would have recounted the peculiarities of complexion, or of feature, in some individual who was the subject of a personal description.  “The rogue has no need of showing his brazen-faced trull to be known!  I chased him, for six-and-thirty hours, in the chops of St. George’s, no later than the last season; and the fellow ran about us, like a dolphin playing under a ship’s fore-foot.  We had him, now on our weather bow, and now crossing our course, and, once in a while, in our wake, as if he had been a Mother Carey’s chicken looking for our crumbs.  He seems snug enough in that cove, to be sure, and yet I’ll wager the pay of any month in the twelve, that he gives us the slip.  Captain Ludlow, the brigantine under our lee, here, in Spermaceti, is the well-known Skimmer of the Seas!”

“The Skimmer of the Seas!” echoed twenty voices, in a manner to show the interest created by the unexpected information.

“I’ll swear to his character before any Admiralty Judge in England, or even in France, should there be occasion to go into an outlandish court—­but no need of an oath, when here is a written account I took, with my own hands, having the chase in plain view, at noon-day.”  While speaking, the sailing-master drew a tobacco-box from his pocket, and removing a coil of pig-tail, he came to a deposit of memorandums, that vied with the weed itself in colors.  “Now, gentlemen,” he continued, “you shall have her build, as justly as if the master-carpenter had laid it down with his rule.  ’Remember to bring a muff of marten’s fur from America, for Mrs. Trysail—­buy it in London, and swear’—­this is not the paper—­I let your boy, Mr. Luff, stow away the last entry of tobacco for me, and the young dog has disturbed every document I own.  This is the way the government accounts get jammed, when Parliament wants to overhaul them.  But I suppose young blood will have its run!  I let a monkey into a church of a Saturday night myself, when a youngster, and he made such stowage of the prayer-books, that the whole parish was by the ears for six months; and there is one quarrel between two old ladies, that has not been made up to this hour.—­Ah! here we have it:—­’Skimmer of the Seas.—­Full-rigged forward, with fore-and-aft mainsail, abaft; a gaff-top-sail; taut in his spars, with light top-hamper; neat in his gear, as any beauty—­Carries a ring-tail in light weather; main-boom like a frigate’s top-sail-yard, with a main-top-mast-stay-sail as big as a jib.  Low in the water, with a woman figure-head; carries sail more like a devil than a human being, and lies within five points, when jammed up hard on a wind.’  Here are marks by which one of Queen Anne’s maids of honor might know the rogue; and there you see them all, as plainly as human nature can show them in a ship!”

“The Skimmer of the Seas!” repeated the young officers, who had crowded round the veteran tar, to hear this characteristic description of the notorious free-trader.