The wind had been highly favourable from the first, and since the stranger had been discovered it had blown fresh, and we went along at a rapid rate, stemming the water, and dashing the spray off from the bows, and cutting the water like a shark.

This was very singular to us, we couldn’t understand it, neither could the captain, and we looked very suspiciously at the stranger, and wished him at the bottom, for the freshness of the wind now became a gale, and yet the ship came through the water steadily, and away we went before the wind, as if the devil drove us; and mind I don’t mean to say he didn’t.

The gale increased to a hurricane, and though we had not a stitch of canvass out, yet we drove before the gale as if we had been shot out of the mouth of a gun.

The stranger still sat on the water casks, and all night long he kept up his infernal whistle.  Now, sailors don’t like to hear any one whistle when there’s such a gale blowing over their heads—­it’s like asking for more; but he would persist, and the louder and stronger the wind blew, the louder he whistled.

At length there came a storm of rain, lightning, and wind.  We were tossed mountains high, and the foam rose over the vessel, and often entirely over our heads, and the men were lashed to their posts to prevent being washed away.

But the stranger still lay on the water casks, kicking his heels and whistling his infernal tune, always the same.  He wasn’t washed away nor moved by the action of the water; indeed, we heartily hoped and expected to see both him and the water cask floated overboard at every minute; but, as the captain said,—­

“Confound the binnacle! the old water tub seems as if it were screwed on to the deck, and won’t move off and he on the top of it.”

There was a strong inclination to throw him overboard, and the men conversed in low whispers, and came round the captain, saying,—­

“We have come, captain, to ask you what you think of this strange man who has come so mysteriously on board?”

“I can’t tell what to think, lads; he’s past thinking about—­he’s something above my comprehension altogether, I promise you.”

“Well, then, we are thinking much of the same thing, captain.”

“What do you mean?”

“That he ain’t exactly one of our sort.”

“No, he’s no sailor, certainly; and yet, for a land lubber, he’s about as rum a customer as ever I met with.”

“So he is, sir.”

“He stands salt water well; and I must say that I couldn’t lay a top of those water casks in that style very well.”

“Nor nobody amongst us, sir.”

“Well, then, he’s in nobody’s way, it he?—­nobody wants to take his berth, I suppose?”

The men looked at each other somewhat blank; they didn’t understand the meaning at all—­far from it; and the idea of any one’s wanting to take the stranger’s place on the water casks was so outrageously ludicrous, that at any other time they would have considered it a devilish good joke and have never ceased laughing at it.