All was active and busy; every one getting his vessel ship-shape and tidy,--tarring, painting, mending sails, stretching new bunting, and getting in sea-store; boats were plying on every side, signals flying, guns firing from the men-of-war, and everything was lively as might be,--all but me.

There I was, like an old water-logged timber ship, never moving a spar, but looking for all the world as though I were a settling fast to go down stern foremost: may be as how I had no objection to that same; but that's neither here nor there.

Well, I sat down on the fluke of an anchor, and began a thinking if it wasn't better to go before the mast than live on that way.

Just before me, where I sat down, there was an old schooner that lay moored in the same place for as long as I could remember.

She was there when I was a boy, and never looked a bit the fresher nor newer as long as I recollected; her old bluff bows, her high poop, her round stern, her flush deck, all Dutch-like, I knew them well, and many a time I delighted to think what queer kind of a chap he was that first set her on the stocks, and pondered in what trade she ever could have been.