THE PILOT OF THE NANTUCKET SHOALS.

“ Get the starboard anchor ready for letting go, Mr. Marline. How mucin
water have we?”

“ ive fathoms, sir, last cast.”

“ By the deep four,” sang out the leadsman in the chains.

“Lively, my man; another cast. Down with the helm, quartermaster; hard
down. Mr. Marline, let go the starboard anchor,” he shouted.

“Hold on, Captain; for Heaven’s sake, don’t anchor here,” earnestly inter-
rupted Jack. “Try and tack her. If she won’t tack we can still anchor, as a
last resort —and get ashore while we have a chance,” he muttered to himself.
“Tl tell you as soon as we get around why it won’t do to anchor here.”

Captain Somerset glanced searchingly into Jack’s face; something there
seemed to reassure him, for he turned abruptly to the officer of the deck.

“Go about, Mr. Marline,” he said.

“Do you think she'll go round in this light breeze?” inquired Jack
anxiously.

“T don’t know, but we can try; at any rate, your idea isa good one. If she
won’t tack we are no worse off than we were before,” answered the captain.

“There is a heavy tide on the weather bow, you know,” Jack continued
- shyly, for he had just begun to realize that he had been giving directions to
these old officers who had sailed ships before he was born.

“Very true, my boy. Remember, Mr. Marline, a late haul of the head
_ yards ;” and turning to Jack with a twinkle in his eye, “I say, my lad, you seem
to be about as lively a sailor for your years as one is likely to run across.
Where did you say you came from ?”

“Nantucket, sir; they breed that kind there,” Jack answered simply.

“Ready about! Stations for stays!” shouted the officer of the deck through
the trumpet.

The crowd of “middies” gathered around Hunk vanished like mist before
the sun.

Pandemonium seemed to reign supreme for the space of ten seconds; men
and boys rushed hither and thither with what would have appeared to a lands-
man’s eye the utmost confusion, and then suddenly, as if by magic, the tumult
died away as quickly as it had begun. Even before the shrill pipe of the boat-
swain had ceased, every man stood silently at his station.

Jack now for the first time had an opportunity to look about him. From his
place on the bridge, just forward of the mizzen mast, he saw stretched before
him the broad flush-deck of the frigate; the crew, mostly composed of boys, with
here and there a sprinkling of grizzly tars, all aft at the main and “ crojic”
braces, silently waiting the word of command to swing the after yards.

They looked very different from the midshipmen he had pictured in his mind —
the young gentleman in Captain Marryat’s novels, with his roundabout and ever-
lasting spyglass, whose chief function in life seemed to be to worry other people.