He then put one foot on the neck of his prisoner, and, seizing his lower member as it swung uppermost, he coolly placed it in the lap of the awe-struck tailor.

“There, friend,” he said, “handle your needle and palm now, as if you were at job-work.  Your knowing handicraft always begins with the foundation wherein he makes sure that his upper gear will stand.”

“The Lord protect me, and all other sinful mortals, from an untimely end!” exclaimed Homespun, gazing at the vacant view from his giddy elevation, with a sensation a little resembling that with which the aeronaut, in his first experiment, regards the prospect beneath.

“Settle away this waister,” again called Fid; “he interrupts rational conversation by his noise; and, as his gear is condemned by this here tailor, why, you may turn him over to the purser for a new outfit.”

The real motive, however, for getting rid of his pendant companion was a twinkling of humanity, that still glimmered through the rough humour of the tar, who well knew that his prisoner must hang where he did, at some little expense of bodily ease.  As soon as his request was complied with, he turned to the good-man, to renew the discourse, with just as much composure as though they were both seated on the deck, or as if a dozen practical jokes, of the same character, were not in the process of enactment, in as many different parts of the vessel.

“What makes you open your eyes, brother, in this port-hole fashion?” commenced the topman.  “This is all water that you see about you, except that hommoc of blue in the eastern board, which is a morsel of upland in the Bahamas, d’ye see.”

“A sinful and presuming world is this we live in!” returned the good-man; “nor can any one tell at what moment his life is to be taken from him.  Five bloody and cruel wars have I lived to see in safety and yet am I reserved to meet this disgraceful and profane end at last.”

“Well, since you’ve had your luck in the wars, you’ve the less reason to grumble at the bit of a surge you may have felt in your garments, as they run you up to this here yard-arm.  I say, brother, I’ve known stouter fellows take the same ride, who never knew when or how they got down again.”

Homespun, who did not more than half comprehend the allusion of Fid, now regarded him in a way that announced some little desire for an explanation, mingled with great admiration of the unconcern with which his companion maintained his position, without the smallest aid from any thing but his self-balancing powers.

“I say, brother,” resumed Fid, “that many a stout seaman has been whipt up to the end of a yard, who has started by the signal of a gun, and who has staid there just as long as the president of a court-martial was pleased to believe might be necessary to improve his honesty!”

“It would be a fearful and frightful trifling with Providence, in the least offending and conscientious mariner, to take such awful punishments in vain, by acting them in his sports; but doubly so do I pronounce it in the crew of a ship on which no man can say at what hour retribution and compunction are to alight.  It seems to me unwise to tempt Providence by such provocating exhibitions.”