"Why shouldn't I ?" "Begorra, ye're a caution!" he ejaculated.

"An', did that haythin, Ching Wang, wake ye up this mornin' wid some coffee, as he promised me.
I wor too busy to say you or ax you afore ?" "Yes," I replied; "and many thanks for your kind thoughtfulness." "Stow that flummery," he cried; and to prevent my thanking him he began to tell Jerrold and me one of his funny yarns about a pig which his grandmother had, but unfortunately the story was nipped in the bud by a roar from the captain on the poop.
"Hands 'bout ship!" In a second the boatswain was away piping on the forecastle, and ropes cast off and sails flapping again.
"Helms a-lee!" was the next order from the captain, followed by a second which grew familiar enough to me in time.

"Raise tacks and sheets!" and the foretack and main-sheet were cast off with the weather main-brace hauled taut.
Then came the final command, "Main-sail haul!" and the Silver Queen came up to the wind slowly.

The foretack being then boarded and the main- sheet hauled aft, she heeled over on the starboard tack with the wind well on her starboard beam, heading towards the South Foreland, which she rounded soon after.
Off Dungeness, which we reached about three in the afternoon, or "six bells," exactly twenty-four hours from the time of our leaving the docks, we hove-to, backing our main-topsail and hoisting a whiff at the peak as a signal that we wanted a boat from the shore to disembark our pilot.
A dandy-rigged little cutter soon came dancing out to us; when the thin man in the monkey-jacket took his farewell of Captain Gillespie and went on board to be landed, the Silver Queen filling again and shaping a course west by south for Beachy Head, and so on down channel, free now of the last link that bound her to old England.
The afternoon, however, was not destined to pass without another incident.
It was getting on for sunset; and, steering more to the west well out from the land so as to avoid the Royal Sovereign shoal, we must have been just abreast of Hastings, although we could not see it, the weather thickening at the time, when suddenly a strange bird settled on the rigging utterly exhausted.

It had evidently been blown out to sea and lost its reckoning.
"Here's a Mother Carey's chicken come aboard!" cried Sam Weeks, making for the poor tired thing to catch it.