of a sail. After lingering some time the captain’s wife gave the signal, when we raised the end of the plank and "Old Neptune’s" body was consigned to a watery grave.
A Sea Dirge.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them, — Ding, dong, bell.
— Shakespeare.
We made the passage to Mobile in seven days. The captain, who owned two-thirds of the schooner, finding freights very dull, and wishing to lessen his expenses, discharged the young man, the boy, and myself. The boy was, indeed, "a stranger in a strange land." We all felt much sympathy for him.
Soon after leaving the schooner, I visited my uncle, Major Thomas Sturtevant, at Spring Hill, about six miles out from the city. The few weeks that I remained with him I enjoyed much, the plantation hands giving me a great deal of amusement.
After leaving my uncle’s home I passed over Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans. While there I fell in with an old shipmate by the name of Charlie Rugg, who was working at ship-painting in Algiers, opposite New Orleans. I assisted him about painting the spars of the ship Nathaniel Kimball. While at work on the fore-
