A. F. H.
THE REEFER OF ’76.
———
BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUISING IN THE LAST WAR.”
———
THE WHITE SQUALL.
I was standing one sultry afternoon, by the weather railing, gazing listlessly over the schooner’s side, and indulging in such reveries as crowd upon the mind in our moments of idleness, when my attention was called to the cry of the look-out that a sail was hovering to windward; and gazing out in that direction I was soon enabled to detect a white speck far up on the seaboard in that quarter, bearing as much resemblance, in the eye of an unpractised observer, to the wing of a sea-gull, as to what we knew it really to be—the royal of a man-of-war. In an instant all was bustle on our decks. The men below poured up the gangway: the skulkers came out from under the sides of the guns; the officers gathered eagerly in a knot abaft the mainmast; spy-glasses were put in requisition, shrewd guesses were made respecting the flag of the stranger, and all the curiosity which the sight of an unknown sail produces on board a man-of-war, was displayed in its full force amongst us.
“I think she carries herself like a Frenchman,” said the first lieutenant.
“Pardon me,” said the skipper, “but she lifts as if she were an Englishman.”