“To-morrow night, if the wind holds to the southward. We took in our powder this morning. Where were you stationed at quarters on board the —?”
“Nowhere. I was not on the ship’s books until a day or two before I left her.”
“Then you must be a powder-monkey with me; you can hand powder up, if you can do nothing else.”
“I can do more,” replied Willy, proudly; “I can roll shells overboard.”
“Ay, ay, so you can: I forgot that. I suppose I must put you on the quarter-deck, and make an officer of you, as Captain M— intended to do.”
“I mean to stand by you when we fight,” said Willy, taking McElvina’s hand.
“Thank you—that may not be so lucky. I’m rather superstitious; and, if I recollect right, your old friend Adams had that honour when he was killed.”
The name of old Adams being mentioned, made Willy silent and unhappy. McElvina perceived it; the conversation was dropped, and they returned home.
A few days afterwards, La Belle Susanne sailed, amidst the shouts and vivas of the multitude collected on the pier, and a thousand wishes for “succès,” and “bon voyage”—the builder clapping his hands, and skipping with all the simial ecstasy of a Frenchman, at the encomiums lavished upon his vessel, as she cleaved through the water with the undeviating rapidity of a barracouta. But the vivas, and the shouts, and the builder, and the pier that he capered on, were soon out of sight; and our hero was once more confiding in the trackless and treacherous ocean.
“Well, she does walk,” said Phillips, who had followed the fortunes of his captain, and was now looking over the quarter of the vessel. “She must be a clipper as catches us with the tacks on board! Right in the wind’s eye too; clean full. By the powers, I believe if you were to lift her, she would lay a point on the other side of the wind.”