and the fore and mizzen to port.  No sooner was she all snug, than tackles were got up on the yards and stays, and the long-boat and pinnace hove out.  The swinging booms were then guyed out, and the boats made fast by geswarps, and everything in harbor style.  After breakfast, the hatches were taken off, and everything got ready to receive hides from the Pilgrim.  All day, boats were passing and repassing, until we had taken her hides from her, and left her in ballast trim.  These hides made but little show in our hold, though they had loaded the Pilgrim down to the water’s edge.  This changing of the hides settled the question of the destination of the two vessels, which had been one of some speculation with us.  We were to remain in the leeward ports, while the Pilgrim was to sail, the next morning, for San Francisco.  After we had knocked off work, and cleared up decks for the night, my friend Stimson came on board, and spent an hour with me in our berth between decks.  The Pilgrim’s crew envied me my place on board the ship, and seemed to think that I had got a little to windward of them, especially in the matter of going home first.  Stimson was determined to go home in the Alert, by begging or buying.  If Captain Thompson would not let him come on other terms, he would purchase an exchange with some one of the crew.  The prospect of another year after the Alert should sail was rather ``too much of the monkey.’’ About seven o’clock the mate came down into the steerage in fine trim for fun, roused the boys out of the berth, turned up the carpenter with his fiddle, sent the steward with lights to put in the between-decks, and set all hands to dancing.  The between-decks were high enough to allow of jumping, and being clear, and white, from holystoning, made a good dancing-hall.  Some of the Pilgrim’s crew were in the forecastle, and they all turned-to and had a regular sailor’s shuffle till eight bells.  The Cape Cod boy could dance the true fisherman’s jig, barefooted, knocking with his heels, and slapping the decks with his bare feet, in time with the music.  This was a favorite amusement of the mate’s, who used to stand at the steerage door, looking on, and if the boys would not dance, hazed them round with a rope’s end, much to the entertainment of the men.

The next morning, according to the orders of the agent, the Pilgrim set sail for the windward, to be gone three or four months.  She got under way with no fuss, and came so near us as to throw a letter on board, Captain Faucon standing at the tiller himself, and steering her as he would a mackerel smack.  When Captain Thompson was in command of the Pilgrim, there was as much preparation and ceremony as there would be in getting a seventy-four under way.  Captain Faucon was a sailor, every inch of him.  He knew what a ship was, and was as much at home in one as a cobbler in his stall.  I wanted no better proof of this than the opinion of the ship’s crew, for they had been six months under his command, and knew him thoroughly, and if sailors allow their captain to be a good seaman, you may be sure he is one, for that is a thing they are not usually ready to admit.  To find fault with the seamanship of the captain is a crew’s reserved store for grumbling.