run out and loaded, the ensign and broad pennant set, the yards squared by lifts and braces, and everything got ready to make a fair appearance.  The instant she showed her nose round the point we began our salute.  She came in under top-gallant-sails, clewed up and furled her sails in good order, and came-to within swinging distance of us.  It being Sunday, and nothing to do, all hands were on the forecastle, criticising the new comer.  She was a good, substantial ship, not quite so long as the Alert, wall-sided and kettle-bottomed, after the latest fashion of south-shore cotton and sugar wagons; strong, too, and tight, and a good average sailer, but with no pretensions to beauty, and nothing in the style of a ``crack ship.’’ Upon the whole, we were perfectly satisfied that the Alert might hold up her head with a ship twice as smart as she.

At night some of us got a boat and went on board, and found a large, roomy forecastle (for she was squarer forward than the Alert), and a crew of a dozen or fifteen men and boys sitting around on their chests, smoking and talking, and ready to give a welcome to any of our ship’s company.  It was just seven months since they left Boston, which seemed but yesterday to us.  Accordingly, we had much to ask; for though we had seen the newspapers which she had brought, yet these were the very men who had been in Boston, and seen everything with their own eyes.  One of the green hands was a Boston boy, from one of the public schools, and, of course, knew many things which we wished to ask about, and, on inquiring the names of our two Boston boys, found that they had been school-mates of his.  Our men had hundreds of questions to ask about Ann Street, the boarding-houses, the ships in port, the rate of wages, and other matters.

Among her crew were two English man-of-war’s-men, so that, of course, we soon had music.  They sang in the true sailor’s style, and the rest of the crew, which was a remarkably musical one, joined in the choruses.  They had many of the latest sailor songs, which had not yet got about among our merchantmen, and which they were very choice of.  They began soon after we came on board, and kept it up until after two bells, when the second mate came forward and called ``the Alerts away!’’ Battle-songs, drinking-songs, boat-songs, love-songs, and everything else, they seemed to have a complete assortment of, and I was glad to find that ``All in the Downs,’’ ``Poor Tom Bowline,’’ ``The Bay of Biscay,’’ ``List, ye Landsmen!’’ and other classical songs of the sea, still held their places.  In addition to these, they had picked up at the theatres and other places a few songs of a little more genteel cast, which they were very proud of; and I shall never forget hearing an old salt, who had broken his voice by hard drinking on shore, and bellowing from the mast-head in a hundred northwesters, singing—­ with all manner of ungovernable trills and quavers, in the high notes breaking into a rough falsetto, and in the low ones growling along like the dying away of the boatswain’s ``All hands ahoy!’’ down the hatchway—­ ``O no, we never mention him.’’