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"As Lyon was cruising about," he said, "and his sloop was pitching her catheads under, this thing was washed upon a spare anchor, where it stuck. It's a queer flag. Can it have had any connection with the lugger?" Cuffe looked, and he immediately recognized the little ala e ala jack, that the Italians had described to him in their many conversations.

"It's no great matter," he answered; and then we fell to with a will until the meal was finished. At three bells in the afternoon the sea had begun to go down enough to allow us to get our new topsails on her and a main-topgallantsail. The Pirate went smoking through it under the pressure, trembling with each surge, and throwing a perfect storm of water over her catheads.

She was sunk in snow to some planks above the garboard-streak, but her lines forward were fine, making her almost wedge-shaped, though the flair of her bows was great, so that she swelled up like a balloon to the catheads.

The one side surpassed in the number of its ships, the other in the experience of its sailors: to the first the height of the vessels, the thickness of the catheads and the towers were a help, but charges straight ahead furthered the progress of the second, and the strength of Caesar's marines was matched by the daring of their antagonists; for the majority of them, being deserters from Italy, were quite desperate.

Now an ancient whale-ship master fell to talking about the sort of crews they used to have in his early days. Said he: "Sometimes we'd have a batch of college students Queer lot. Ignorant? Why, they didn't know the catheads from the main brace. But if you took them for fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month than another man would in a year.

Like an avalanche, she shot forward and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand battering rams, burying her bow to the catheads in the milky foam at the bottom that came on deck in all directions forward, astern, to right and left, through the hawse-pipes and over the rail. The wind began to drop, and by ten o'clock we were talking of heaving her to.

Like the beauteous model, who was declared to be the greatest belle in Amsterdam, it was full in the bows, with a pair of enormous catheads, a copper bottom, and withal a most prodigious poop.

The forward part of the trireme was constructed with a view to effectiveness in ramming. Massive catheads projected far enough to rip away the upper works of an enemy, while the bronze beak at the waterline drove into her hull. This beak, or ram, was constructed of a core of timber heavily sheathed with bronze, presenting three teeth.

It was impossible to light a fire, and we could not therefore dress our food or obtain a warm drink. The cold was beyond language severe. The rigging was glazed with ice, and great pendants of the silvery brilliance of crystal hung from the yards, bowsprit, and catheads, whilst the sails were frozen to the hardness of granite, and lay like sheets of iron rolled up in gaskets of steel.

I was standing on the fo'c's'le head, sadly looking out over the bows, while the light lasted, at the moving panorama of Nature around me; the dancing waves curled up on either side of the catheads as the vessel plunged her forefoot down, and streaming aft in a long wake to leeward; the cloudless sky above; the vast solitary expanse of the horizon; the leaping fish and spouting whales keenly alive to everything and yet my mind full of all my grievances, being especially wrathful with the skipper for accepting Mr Macdougall's statement against me, without first allowing me to utter a word in my own defence.