In the midst of the clamorous rejoicings that attended this success, one individual made himself conspicuous for the gravity and business-like air with which he performed his part of the comedy.  Seated on the outer end of a lower yard, with as much steadiness as though he had been placed on an ottoman, he was intently occupied in examining into the condition of a captive, who had been run up at his feet, with an order from the waggish captain of the top, “to turn him in for a jewel-block;” a name that appears to have been taken from the precious stones that are so often seen pendant from the ears of the other sex.

“Ay, ay,” muttered this deliberate and grave-looking tar, who was no other than Richard Fid “the stropping you’ve sent with the fellow is none of the best; and, if he squeaks so now, what will he do when you come to reeve a rope through him!  By the Lord, masters, you should have furnished the lad a better outfit, if you meant to send him into good company aloft.  Here are more holes in his jacket than there are cabin windows to a Chinese junk.  Hilloa!—­on deck there!—­you Guinea, pick me up a tailor, and send him aloft, to keep the wind out of this waister’s tarpauling.”

The athletic African, who had been posted on the forecastle for his vast strength, cast an eye upward, and, with both arms thrust into his bosom, he rolled along the deck, with just as serious a mien as though he had been sent on a duty of the greatest import.  The uproar over his head had drawn a most helpless-looking mortal from a retired corner of the birth-deck, to the ladder of the forward hatch, where, with a body half above the combings, a skein of strong coarse thread around his neck, a piece of bees-wax in one hand, and a needle in the other, he stood staring about him, with just that sort of bewildered air that a Chinese mandarin would manifest, were he to be suddenly initiated in the mysteries of the ballet.  On this object the eye of Scipio fell.  Stretching out an arm, he cast him upon his shoulder; and, before the startled subject of his attack knew into whose hands he had fallen, a hook was passed beneath the waistband of his trowsers, and he was half way between the water and the spar, on his way to join the considerate Fid.

“Have a care lest you let the man fall into the sea!” cried Wilder sternly, from his stand on the distant poop.

“He’m tailor, masser Harry,” returned the black, without altering a muscle; “if a clothes no ’trong, he nobody blame but heself.”

During this brief parlance, the good-man Homespun had safely arrived at the termination of his lofty flight.  Here he was suitably received by Fid, who raised him to his side; and, having placed him comfortably between the yard and the boom, he proceeded to secure him by a lashing that would give the tailor the proper disposition of his hands.

“Bouse a bit on this waister!” called Richard, when he had properly secured the good-man; “so; belay all that.”