“Has anything happened, on board that brig?” demanded her master.

“Man overboard,” answered Spike—­“you hav’nt seen his hat, have you?”

“No—­no,” came back, just as the schooner, in her onward course, swept beyond the reach of the voice.  Her people collected together, and one or two ran up the rigging a short distance, stretching their necks, on the look-out for the “poor fellow,” but they were soon called down to “’bout ship.”  In less than five minutes, another vessel, a rakish coasting sloop, came within hail.

“Did n’t that brig strike the Pot Rock, in passing the Gate?” demanded her captain.

“Ay, ay!—­and a devil of a rap she got, too.”

This satisfied him; there being nothing remarkable in a vessel’s acting strangely that had hit the Pot Rock in passing Hell Gate.

“I think we may get in our mainsail on the strength of this, Mr. Mulford,” said Spike.  “There can be nothing oncommon in a craft’s shortening sail, that has a man overboard, and which has hit the Pot Rock.  I wonder I never thought of all this before.”

`Here is a skiff trying to get alongside of us, Capt.  Spike,” called out the boatswain.

“Skiff be d—­d!  I want no skiff here.”

“The man that called himself Jack Tier is in her, sir.”

“The d—­l he is!” cried Spike, springing over to the opposite side of the deck to take a look for himself.  To his infinite satisfaction he perceived that Tier was alone in the skiff, with the exception of a negro, who pulled its sculls, and that this was a very different boat from that which had glanced through Hell Gate, like an arrow darting from its bow.

“Luff, and shake your topsail,” called out Spike.  “Get a rope there to throw to this skiff.”

The orders were obeyed, and Jack Tier, with his clothes-bag, was soon on the deck of the Swash.  As for the skiff and the negro, they were cast adrift the instant the latter had received his quarter.  The meeting between Spike and his quondam steward’s mate was a little remarkable.  Each stood looking intently at the other, as if to note the changes which time had made.  We cannot say that Spike’s hard, red, selfish countenance betrayed any great feeling, though such was not the case with Jack Tier’s.  The last, a lymphatic, puffy sort of a person at the best, seemed really a little touched, and he either actually brushed a tear from his eye, or he affected so to do.

“So, you are my old shipmate, Jack Tier, are ye?” exclaimed Spike, in a half-patronizing, half-hesitating way—­“and you want to try the old craft ag’in.  Give us a leaf of your log, and let me know where you have been this many a day, and what you have been about?  Keep the brig off, Mr. Mulford.  We are in no particular hurry to reach Throg’s, you’ll remember, sir.”