“Terrible misfortune?” repeated the impassioned owner.  “Is it a terrible misfortune to make a West Coast voyage within three months?”

“No,” said the burly tug master, “I now see you do not apprehend the position.  I didn’t care to say to you that the captain had a vision off Cape Horn which decided him to return to this port.”

“What?” said the almost speechless potentate.  “A vision?  Back here, without being to Valparaiso?  My God!—­I will never get over it!”

And in truth he nearly collapsed, business, body, and soul, over the matter.

The vessel was brought into the harbour.  The sanctified skipper did not receive the promised gifts!  The vessel sailed in a few days without him for the same destination; and until a few years since he could be seen any day walking the quay, still holding to the belief that it was the Divine will he had carried out.  This faith was strengthened by the vessel never having been heard of again after sailing the second time.  I never heard of the owner showing any vindictiveness to the poor captain, who was, no doubt, the victim of a strange hallucination.

It would be unfair to impute a monopoly of superstition to the seafarer.  Sailors have superstitions which are not now exclusively theirs, though they may have been the originators of them; for instance, placing a loaf of bread upside down, spilling the salt (and nullifying the mischief by throwing a few grains over the left shoulder); these, as well as the leaving of stray leaves and stalks in teacups are considered sure indications of past or coming events, even by the large and enlightened public who pass their lives on dry land.  There are few things more comical than to see the nautical person studiously avoid passing under a shore ladder.  The penalty of it has a terror for him; and yet his whole life is spent in passing to and fro under rope ladders aboard ship without any suspicion of evil consequences.  But the landsman’s belief in mystic tokens and flighty safeguards is faint indeed compared with that which permeates and saturates the mind of the typical sailor.  A gentleman with whom I was long and closely associated held definite opinions on symbolic apparitions.  His faith in black cats was immovable; but this only extended to those who actually crossed his path, and to him that was a sign indicative of good fortune.  I have seen him go into ecstasies of joy over an incident of this kind; and woe unto the person who interrupted the current of his happiness.  He would curse him with amazing fluency until resentment choked the power of expression.  This same human phenomenon was, in early life, shipwrecked on one of the hidden shoals with which the north-east coast abounds, at the very moment when he was taking from the girdle in the galley a hot cake he had baked in celebration of his birthday, and as a precaution against future calamities he ever after wore the left foot stocking outside in; and although he has passed through many