down; the captain all the while raving, shouting, and foaming at the mouth.

'Against me—against me—against me! Avaunt! A man's no match for ye. Ye have all! Lost again! No; here—stop. On the next card, I stake myself—my ship—my'—

'Stop!' shouted old Bartholomew. He had been standing at the foot of the companion, and he burst into the cabin. 'Stop, Captain Goss, in the name of God!'

Goss turned round to him. His face was so like the Evil One's that we did not look for any other. Then a brass-mounted pistol—a shot—and rolling smoke: all passed in a minute. Then the captain flung a card upon the table, and with a yell like a wild beast, shouted out: 'Lost!' fell over the cards, extinguished the lamp; and we neither heard nor saw more, till there came a shuffling on the companion, and Bartholomew crawled out with his face all blackened by the powder, and the blood trickling from his cheek, where the ball had grazed it. We all went for'ard, mates, and had a long palaver, and resolved to go ashore at daybreak, and leave a doomed captain and a doomed ship. But we didn't know our man. In the gray of the morning, we heard the handspike rattle on the hatch, and we tumbled up one after the other. The captain was there, looking much as usual, but only paler.

'Man the windlass,' says he.

'We're going ashore, sir,' says Bartholomew firmly.

'How?' says the captain.

'In the boat,' says Bartholomew.

'Are you?' says Goss: 'look at her!' He had cut her adrift, and she was a mile off.

'And now,' says Goss, 'I was drunk last night, and frightened you—playing tricks with cards. Don't be fools; do your duty, and defy Davy Jones. If not'—And then he flung open his pea-coat, and we saw four of the brass-mounted pistols in his belt. But, mates, his one eye was worse than the four muzzles, and we slunk to our work, and obeyed him. The easterly breeze came fresh, and we were soon bowling away nor'ard. The captain stood long at the helm, and we gathered for'ard. 'We're lost!' said Bartholomew; 'we're lost men! We're bought and sold!'

'Bartholomew,' shouts the captain, 'come and take the helm!' He went aft, mates, like a lamb; and the captain walked for'ards, and looked at us, one after another; and the one eye cowed us. We were not like men; and he was our master. When he went below, we grouped together, and looked out to windward. It was getting black—black; the wind was coming off in gusts; and the Lively Nan began to dance to the seas that came rolling in from the eastward. 'The equinoctial!' we says one to another. In an hour more, mates, all the sky to windward was like a big sheet of lead; with white clouds, like feathers, driving athwart it—the clouds, as it were, whiter than the firmament. You know the meaning, mates, of a sky like that; and accordingly, by nightfall, we had it; and the Lively Nan, under close-reefed main-sail and storm-jib, was groaning, and plunging, and diving in the seas—the wind blowing, mates, as if it would have wrenched the mast out of the keelson. Many a gale have I been in, before and since, but that was the worst of all. Well, mates, we thought we were doomed, but we did our work, silent and steady; and we kept the smack under a press of canvas that none but such a boat could bear, to claw her off the lee-shore—off them fearsome sands that lie all along Lincolnshire. Captain Goss was as bold and cool as ever, and stood by the tiller-tackle, and steered the ship as no hand but his could do.

It was the gloaming of the night, mates, when the gale came down, heavier and heavier—a perfect blast, that tore up the very sea, and drove sheets of water into the air. We were a'most blinded, and clung to cleats and rigging—the sea tumbling over and over us; and the poor, old smack at length smashed down on her beam-ends. All at once, the mast went over the side; and as we righted and rose on the curl of a seaway, Bartholomew sung out, loud and shrill: 'Sail, ho!' We looked. Right to windward, mates, there was a sort of light opening in the clouds; something of the colour of the ring round the moon in dirty weather, and nigh as round; and in the middle of it was a smack, driving right down on us, her bowsprit not a cable-length from our broadside. She looked wondrous like the Lively Nan herself, and some of us saw our own faces clustered for'ard, looking at ourselves over the bow!

As this notion was passed from one to another, we cried out aloud, that our hour was come. Captain Goss was in the middle of us. 'Hold your baby screeches,' says he. 'You'll be none the worse; it's me and the smack she has to do with.' Even, as he spoke, she was on us. Some fell on their knees, and others clenched their fists and their teeth; but instead of the crash of meeting timber, we heard but a rustle, and the shadow of her sails flitted, as it were, across us; and as they passed, the wind was cold, cold, and struck us like frost; and the next minute the Lively Nan had sunk below our feet, and we found ourselves in the roaring sea, struggling among the wreck of the mast. The smack was gone, and the strange ship gone, and the gale blowing steady and strong. One by one, mates, we got astride of the mast, and lashed ourselves with odds and ends of broken rope; and then we began, as we rose and fell on the sea, to look about and muster how many we were. The crew, including the captain, was seven hands, but we were sure there were eight men sitting on the mast. It was too dark to see faces; but you could see the dark figures clinging to the spar.

'Answer to your names, mates,' says Bartholomew, who somehow took the lead. And so he called over the list till he came to the captain.

'Captain Goss?'

'Here,' says the captain's voice.

We now knew there was somebody behind him who was not one of the crew. It was too dark, however, to see distinctly, and Goss interrupted our view such as it was.

'Who is the man on the end of the mast, Captain Goss?' says Bartholomew.

'You might be old enough to guess that!' replied the captain, and his voice was husky-like, but quite clear; and it never trembled. 'Some men call him one thing, some another; and we of the sea call him Davy Jones.'

Mates, at that we clustered up together as well as we could, and fixing our eyes on what was passing at the other end of the mast, we hardly attended to the seas that broke over and over us. At last, we saw Captain Goss, by the light of the beds of bursting foam, fumbling for something in his breast.

'Is it a Bible you have there?' cried Bartholomew. The captain didn't answer, but pulled out the thing he was trying for; and we guessed somehow, for we could hardly see, that it was the greasy pack of cards.

'Double or quits!' he shouted, 'on all I've staked;' and in another instant there was one horrid, unearthly screech, like what we heard in the cabin before, and the mast, as it were, tipped the heel of it, the cross-trees rising many feet above the water. Whether or no it was the motion of the waves that had tossed it, no man can say; but when the mast rolled again with the next sea, the heel came up empty: Captain Goss and his companion were gone!

'Thank God,' says Old Bartholomew, 'for Jonah is in the sea.' In less than half an hour, mates, we were tossed ashore, without a bruise or scratch. We walked the beach till daylight, and then we saw that the mast had disappeared. None ever saw more a timber or a rope's-end of the Lively Nan. She had been staked and won; but the greasy cards, mates, lay wet and dank upon the beach, and we left them to wither there among the sea-weed.