“Pardon me!” the lady gravely interrupted, “I am, on the contrary, one who has seen much of it.”

The Rover, who had rather suffered his unsettled glances to wander over the youthful countenance of Gertrude than towards her companion, now bent his eyes on the last speaker, where he kept them fastened so long as to create some little embarrassment in the subject of his gaze.

“You seem surprised that the time of a female should have been thus employed,” she observed, with a view to arouse his attention to the impropriety of his observation.

“We were speaking of the sea, if I remember,” he continued, like a man that was suddenly awakened from a deep reverie.  “Ay, I know it was of the sea; for I had grown boastful in my panegyrics:  I had told you that this ship was faster than”—­

“Nothing!” exclaimed Gertrude, laughing at his blunder.  “You were playing Master of Ceremonies at a nautical ball!”

“Will you figure in a minuet?  Shall I honour my boards with the graces of your person?”

“Me, sir? and with whom? the gentleman who knows so well the manner of keeping his feet in a gale?”

“You were about to relieve any doubts we might have concerning the amusements of seamen,” said the governess, reproving the too playful spirit of her pupil, by a glance of her own grave eye.

“Ay, it was the humour of the moment, nor will I balk it.”

He then turned towards Wilder, who had posted himself within ear-shot of what was passing, and continued,—­

“These ladies doubt our gaiety, Mr Wilder.  Let the boatswain give the magical wind of his call, and pass the word ‘To mischief’ among the people.”

Our adventurer bowed his acquiescence, and issued the necessary order.  In a few moments, the precise individual who has already made acquaintance with the reader, in the bar-room of the “Foul Anchor,” appeared in the centre of the vessel, near the main hatchway, decorated, as before, with his silver chain and whistle, and accompanied by two mates who were humbler scholars of the same gruff school.  Then rose a long, shrill whistle from the instrument of Nightingale, who, when the sound had died away on the ear, uttered, in his deepest and least sonorous tones,—­

“All hands to mischief, ahoy!”

We have before had occasion to liken these sounds to the muttering of a bull, nor shall we at present see fit to disturb the comparison, since no other similitude so apt, presents itself.  The example of the boatswain was followed by each of his mates in turn, and then the summons was deemed sufficient.  However unintelligible and grum the call might sound in the musical ears of Gertrude, they produced no unpleasant effects on the organs of a majority of those who heard them.  When the first swelling and protracted note of the call mounted on the still air, each idle and extended young seaman, as he lay stretched upon a spar, or hung dangling from a ratling