Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/290

 after a long cruise, even the bosom of Jack before the mast heaves with joyous emotion. But some of our shipmates who left home with us four years ago are not  with us to-day. Some sleep in old Ocean’s sepulcher, among other treasures of the deep, and some in coral  graves. The Sea Gull's crew, who were bound together in ties of friendship and love, had not been separated  in the hour of death, but had sunk together to rise no  more until the sea is summoned to give up its dead. May they rest in peace!

There was not a man on the sick-list, and the faces of all hands seemed to wear the glow of some bright  vision of happiness. The weather was fine, the wind fair, and, with studding sails set on either side, — below  and aloft, — our good ship, like a thing of life, bounded  onward, as eager to reach home as were her jolly crew. Everything was lovely, and nothing transpired to mar our happiness as we passed through the tropics.

On the 16th crossed the equator. One very warm and pleasant night, in the mid-watch, seeing three of  our quarter growlers (old sailors) taking a siesta on  deck, and enjoying our big dog, Sydney, as a pillow, I  hunted up a bone and placed it about a foot from the  dog’s nose. As soon as Sydney got a smell of the bone he suddenly sprang up, and the sleepers’ heads came  down on deck with a thump. Such a growling! Why, they were like three old bears with sore heads, and if  they had known who the culprit was, I verily believe  they would have thrown him overboard.

On the 28th we crossed the Tropic of Cancer and sailed through what might be called a sea of sun-fish,