I walked to her stern and read her name in gilt letters:  “Pirate, of Philadelphia.”  Then I remembered her.  She was a Yankee ship of evil reputation, and although I wanted to get back to my home in New York, I turned away thankful that I was not homeward bound in that craft.  She had come into port a month before and had reported three men missing from her papers.  There were no witnesses; but the sight of the rest of the crew told the story of the disappearance of their shipmates, and the skipper had been clapped into jail.  I had heard of the ruffian’s sinister record before, and inwardly hoped he would get his deserts for his brutality, although I knew there was little chance for it.  He belonged to the class of captains that was giving American packets the hard name they were getting, so I heartily wished him evil.

As I turned, looking up at the beautiful fabric with her long, tapering, t’gallant masts, topped with skysail yards fore and aft, and her tremendous lower yards nearly ninety feet across, I thought what a splendid ship she was.  It made me angry to think of what a place she must be for the poor devils who would unwittingly ship aboard her.  Only a sailor knows how much of suffering in blows and curses it cost to accomplish all that clean paint and scraped spar.

“Kind o’ good hooker, hey?” said a voice close aboard me, and looking quickly aft I saw a man leaning over the taffrail.  He was a strange-looking fellow, with a great hairy face and bushy head set upon the broadest of shoulders.  As for his legs, he appeared not to have any at all, for the rail was but three feet high and his shoulders just reached above it; his enormously long arms were spread along the rail, elbows outward, and his huge hands folded over the bowl of a pipe which he sucked complacently.

“Not so bad to look at,” I answered, meaningly.

“She is a brute in a seaway, but she keeps dry at both ends,” assented the fellow, utterly ignoring my meaning.  “It’s always so with every hooker if she’s deep.  Some takes it forrad and aft, and some takes it amidships.  It’s all one s’long as she keeps a dry bilge.  Come aboard.”

I hesitated, and then climbed up the mizzen channels, which were level with the wharf.

“Short handed?” I suggested, reaching the deck.

“Naw, there’s nobody but me an’ the doctor in the after guard; we’ll get a crew aboard early in the morning, though; skipper, too, if what they say is kerrect.”

“Where’s the captain?” I asked.

He looked queerly at me for a moment; then he spread his short legs wide apart, and thrust his great hands into his trousers pockets before speaking.

“Ain’t ye never heard?  Limbo, man, and a bad job, too.”  Here he made a motion with his hand around his neck which I understood.

“Murder?”

He nodded.

I hesitated about staying any longer, and he spoke up.