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NIGHTS IN THE GALLEY. SEVENTH YARN. 



MY hopes of hearing a yarn the following night were frustrated by 

 a fatal accident that befel one of our best men, a fore-topman. We 

 had that day sprung our fore-topsail yard, and immediately shifted 

 it, the damaged yard being laid along the gangway by the booms for 

 the carpenters to repair. After all orders, as is the usual custom in all 

 well-regulated ships, we turned the hands up to reef topsails ; just as 

 the men were laying in, the captain of the top making a spring from 

 the yard to the topsail haulyards, to come down by them, missed his 

 hold, and fell headlong on the deck, striking his head against the iron 

 of the fore-topsail yard that was on deck ; his brains were scattered 

 over the dress of the boatswain, who was standing close to where the 

 poor fellow fell. Had he fallen one inch more to starboard, he must 

 have broken the boatswain's neck. He was carried in the sick bay, 

 and laid on the dissecting table ; but nothing could be done, his head 

 was literally crushed to pieces, it was impossible to decypher a single 

 feature. When the doctor pronounced him irrevocably gone, he was 

 laid on a grating, with a union-jack thrown over him, and placed un- 

 der the half-deck. He was a great loss to the ship ; a fine young 

 fellow, who had only been made captain of the foretop for his good 

 conduct a week before his death. No yarning took place that 

 night, though the galley was as well filled as ever, and greater quan- 

 tities of smoke, were for the most part, silently poured forth from the 

 capacious mouths of the galley-rangers. The next forenoon he was 

 buried, and that night Bob Short continued his yarn. And let it not 

 here be said that sailors are an unfeeling set, so soon to forget their 

 shipmates ; for such is not the case ; though their mourning is not so 

 long or so often shown, as landsmen, they still feel as long and as 

 deeply, perhaps more so, the loss of one of their shipmates. 



The night after this accident I made my way, as usual, cigar in 

 hand, to the galley. I was just in time. 



" Poor Rusworth !" (that was the name of the captain of the fore- 

 top,) said Will Gibbon, " I wish he was here now, he was as good a 

 feller as ever stepped atween decks ; but he's gone, and there an end 

 of it." 



" Gone aloft, I hope," said Jack Murray ; " for he was as honest a 

 feller as I ever seed. I wonder who'll be captain of the larboard- 

 watch in his room j we can't have a better." 



" You may say that, Jack," said Tom Bennett ; " he was a mess- 

 mate o' mine in this ship the last three years, when she was in the 

 West Indies, and a good feller he was as ever lived ; but it's no use 

 saying no more about it : he's gone where we must all go at last, and 

 he's only come to an anchor a little while before us, and I hope he's 

 safely moored in that place our parson talks about. 



" I'm sure he is ! I'm sure he is !" said Will Gibbon. So now, 

 Bob, finish that yarn you were a- spinning of." 



