CHAPTER II.
IN AND OUT OVER THE BAR.
Two whaleships were lying at anchor outside the "bar" as the Lydia Ann passed in—one lately arrived from a long voyage, her rusty sides and rough bends nearly naked of copper, with the long grass clinging to the bare sheathing; her stump topmasts and general half-dismantled appearance presenting a striking contrast to the trim, newly-painted outward-bounder, which had just completed her preparations for sea, and, with everything aloft in its place, mainroyal yard crossed, and a full quota of showy, white-bottomed boats on the cranes and overhead, was to weigh anchor for the Pacific next morning. Loud rose the cheerful, measured sound of the hoisting song from the gang on board the inward-bound ship, as the heavy casks of oil were seen to rise slowly from her hatchway, and were discharged into the schooner lashed alongside of her to receive them, while another lighter, deeply loaded, had dropped astern, and was hoisting her mainsail.
"I thought the 'Pandora' had sailed before this time," said the old skipper, as we passed just out of hail of the ships. "They have been a long time fitting her for sea. I wonder," said he to his mate, "who that is that has got in since we left. Get the glass, and see if you can make out her name when we cross her stern."
The mate brought an old battered telescope from a cleet in the companionway, and, after squinting for some time, muttered:
"P—her stern is so rusty that hang me if I can make out the letters—the name begins with a P; I can see that. There's a T in it, and the last letter looks like an H."
"Yes, that's all right," said the skipper. "That's the old 'Plutarch.' She has been expected some time, and has had a long passage home; but she is one of the old Anno Dominy ships, and sails about as fast as you can whip a toad though tar. I was in her two v'y'ges myself in my young days, and we never could drive more than six knot out of her in a gale of wind. She seems to have a foul bottom, too. But she has crawled home at last, and she has brought a good load of ile, too. She had twenty-one hund'ed at last accounts, and that ain't to be sneezed at, nowadays."
"No, indeed, it ain't," returned his partner. "But when was you in the Plutarch? Who had her then?"