Then all of a sudden he sings out, ’Tom Bowling, by the holy poker!  Ladies, it’s old Tom Bowling, that you’ve heard me talk about—­shipmate of mine in the Mary Ann.’  He rose up and shook hands with me ever so hearty—­I sort of glanced around and took a realizing sense of my mate’s saucer eyes—­and then says the governor, ’Plant yourself, Tom, plant yourself; you can’t cat your anchor again till you’ve had a feed with me and the ladies!’ I planted myself alongside the governor, and canted my eye around toward my mate.  Well, sir, his dead-lights were bugged out like tompions; and his mouth stood that wide open that you could have laid a ham in it without him noticing it.”

There was great applause at the conclusion of the old captain’s story; then, after a moment’s silence, a grave, pale young man said: 

“Had you ever met the governor before?”

The old captain looked steadily at this inquirer awhile, and then got up and walked aft without making any reply.  One passenger after another stole a furtive glance at the inquirer; but failed to make him out, and so gave him up.  It took some little work to get the talk-machinery to running smoothly again after this derangement; but at length a conversation sprang up about that important and jealously guarded instrument, a ship’s timekeeper, its exceeding delicate accuracy, and the wreck and destruction that have sometimes resulted from its varying a few seemingly trifling moments from the true time; then, in due course, my comrade, the Reverend, got off on a yarn, with a fair wind and everything drawing.  It was a true story, too—­about Captain Rounceville’s shipwreck —­true in every detail.  It was to this effect: 

Captain Rounceville’s vessel was lost in mid-Atlantic, and likewise his wife and his two little children.  Captain Rounceville and seven seamen escaped with life, but with little else.  A small, rudely constructed raft was to be their home for eight days.  They had neither provisions nor water.  They had scarcely any clothing; no one had a coat but the captain.  This coat was changing hands all the time, for the weather was very cold.  Whenever a man became exhausted with the cold, they put the coat on him and laid him down between two shipmates until the garment and their bodies had warmed life into him again.  Among the sailors was a Portuguese who knew no English.  He seemed to have no thought of his own calamity, but was concerned only about the captain’s bitter loss of wife and children.  By day he would look his dumb compassion in the captain’s face; and by night, in the darkness and the driving spray and rain, he would seek out the captain and try to comfort him with caressing pats on the shoulder.  One day, when hunger and thirst were making their sure inroad; upon the men’s strength and spirits, a floating barrel was seen at a distance.  It seemed a great find, for doubtless it contained food of some sort.  A brave fellow swam to it, and