He hardly knew the difference between the cable and the cathead.

He looked the picture of distress, almost of despair.

But I, being under no obligations to the brutal captain of the brig, was at liberty to obey the impulse of my feelings.

I stepped over the quarter rail, grasped the topmast stay of the sloop, swung myself on the jibboom, and in the space of a few seconds after the captain had concluded his maledictions I was standing on the sloop's forecastle, alongside of Bohun..