Jacob.

'Everything that you drink in England,' Helga answered.

'But I allow,' grunted Thomas, fixing a morose eye upon the horizon, 'that the Scandinavians, as the Danes and likewise the Swedes, along with other nations, including the Russians, aren't so particular in the matter of drink as the English, to say nothing of Deal men. Why,' he added, with a voice of contempt, 'they're often content to do without it. Captains and owners know that. The Scandinavian fancies are so cheap that you may fill your forecastle with twenty sailors on terms that would starve six Englishmen.'

'The Danes are good sailors,' said Helga, looking at him, 'and they are the better sailors because they are a sober people.'

'I've got nothing to say against them as sailors,' retorted Thomas, 'but they ships too cheap, mum--they ships too cheap.'

'They will take what an Englishman will take!' exclaimed Helga, with a little sparkle in her eye.

'So they will, mum--so they will!' exclaimed Abraham soothingly. 'The Dane's a first-class sailor and a temperate man, and when Tommy there'll give me an opportunity of saying as much for him I'll proclaim it.'

I was standing up, peering round the sea, for perhaps the tenth time that morning, when, happening to have my eyes directed astern, as the lugger ran in one of her graceful, buoyant, soaring launches to the summit of a little surge--for the freshening of the wind had already set the water running in heaps, noticeable even now for weight and velocity aboard that open craft of eighteen tons, though from the height of a big ship, the seas would have been no more than a pleasant wrinkling of the northerly swell--I say, happening to look astern at that moment, I caught sight of a flake of white poised starlike over the rim of the ocean.
'A sail!' said I; 'but unhappily in chase of us. Always, in such times as these, whatever shows shows at the wrong end.'Abraham stood up to look, saw the object, and seated himself in silence.'How are you heading the lugger?' cried I.'Sou'-sou'-west,' he answered.'What course have you determined on?' said I, anxious to gather from the character of his navigation what might be our chances of falling in with the homeward-bounders.'Why, keep on heading as we go,' he answered, 'till we strike the north-east trades, which are to be met with a-blowing at about two-and-twenty degrees no'the; then bring the _Airly Marn_ to about south. When the hequator's crossed,' continued he, smoking, with his head well 

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