excessively sleek, and mild, and amiable, and eating her breakfast with the relish of an outside mail-coach passenger. The captain shook his head, and thought himself the most persecuted of beings.

When this self-estimated injured character gained the quarterdeck, he commenced ruminating on the propriety of flogging Joseph Grummet; for, with the loss of his cow's milk, he had lost all due sense of human kindness. But, as the Lords of the Admiralty had lately insisted upon a report being forwarded to them of every punishment that took place, the number of lashes, and the crime for which they were inflicted, the Honourable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban thought that a report would look rather queer running thus: "Joseph Grummet, captain of the waist, six dozen, because my cow gave no milk," or "because private-marine Snickchops saw a ghost," or "for selling the midshipmen sundry bottles of milk;" and this last imagination reminded him that there was one of this highly-gifted class walking to leeward of him. "Mr. Littlejohn!" said the captain with a voice that crawled over the nerves like the screeching of an ill-filed saw.

Small Jack touched his hat with more than usual respect to the exasperated officer, and then, stepping to windward, humbly confronted him.

The captain was too angry for many words; so, looking fearfully into the happy countenance of the reefer, and pointing his fore-finger down perpendicularly, he laconically uttered, "Milk this morning?” "Yes, sir."

"Good?"

The well-breakfasted midshipman licked his lips, and smiled. "Grummet?"-" Yes, sir."

"Tell the boatswain's mate to send him aft."—" Ay, ay, sir.”

And there stood the captain of the waist, with his hat in his hand, opposite to the captain of the ship. There was some difference between those two captains:-one verging upon old age, the other upon manhood. The old man with but two articles of dress upon his person, a canvass shirt and a canvass pair of trousers, for in those latitudes shoes and stockings are dispensed with by the foremast men, excepting on Sundays and when mustering at divisions; the other gay, and almost gorgeous, in white jeans, broad-cloth, and gold. There they stood, the one the personification of meekness, the other of haughty anger. However firm might have been the captain's intentions to convict the man before him by an intricate cross-examination, his warmth of temper defeated them at once, for the old seaman looked more than usually innocent and sheepish. This almost stolid equanimity was sadly provoking.

"You insolent scoundrel!-who milked my cow last night?""The Lord in heaven knows, your honour. Who could it be, sir, without it was the ghost who has laid that poor lad in his sick hammock?"

"And I suppose that the ghost ordered you to hand the milk to the young gentlemen when he had done?"-"Me, sir! Heaven save me! I never se'ed a ghost in my life."

Hypocrite! the bottle you sold the midshipmen!"-" One, your honour, I brought from Antigua, and which I overlooked yesterday."

"I shall not overlook it when I get you to the gangway. Go, Mr. Littlejohn, give orders to beat to quarters the moment the men have had their time."

All that forenoon the captain kept officers and men exercising the great guns, running them in and out, pointing them here and there ;sail-trimmers aloft-boarders on the starboard bow-firemen down in the fore-hold: the men had not a moment's respite, nor the officers either. How potently in their hearts they d-d the cow, even from the tips of her horns unto the tuft at the end of her tail! Five secret resolves were made to poison her that hard-worked morning. Mr. Small Jack, who was stationed at the foremost main-deck guns near her, gave her a kick every time the order came from the quarter-deck to ram home wad and shot.

Well, this sweltering work, under a tropical sun, proceeded till noon, the captain alternately swearing at the officers for want of energy, and exclaiming to himself indignantly, "D- them! how dare they milk my cow! There must be several concerned. Send the carpenter aft. Mr. Wedge, rig both the chain-pumps,-turn the water on in the well. Waisters! man the pumps. Where's that Grummet? Boatswain's mates, out with your colts and lay them over the shoulders of any man that shirks his duty: keep a sharp eye on the captain of the waist."

And thus the poor fellows had, for a finish to their morning's labour, a half-hour of the most overpowering exertion to which you can set mortal man,—that of working at the chain-pumps. When Mr. Littlejohn saw elderly Joseph Grummet stripped to the waist, the perspiration streaming down him in bucket-fulls, and panting as it were for his very life, he, the said Small Jack, very rightly opined that no milk would be forthcoming next morning.

At noon the men were as usual piped to dinner, with an excellent appetite for their pork and pease, and a thirsty relish for their grog; for which blessings they had the cow alone to thank. They were very ungrateful.

No sooner was the hour of dinner over than the captain all of a sudden discovered that his ship's company were not smart enough in reefing topsails. So at it they went, racing up and down the rigging, tricing up and laying out, lowering away and hoisting, until six bells, three o'clock, when the angry and hungry captain went to his dinner. He had made himself more unpopular in that day than any other commander in the fleet.

The dinner was unsocial enough. When a man is not satisfied with himself, it is rarely that he is satisfied with any body else. Now the whole ship's company, officers as well as men, were divided into parties, and into only two, respecting this affair of the cow; one believed in a supernatural, the other in a roguish agency; in numbers they were about equal, so that the captain stood in the pleasant predicament of being looked upon in a sinful light by one half of his crew, and in a ludicrous one by the other.

However, as the night advanced, and the marine who had seen the cow-spirit grew worse, the believers in the supernatural increased rapidly; and, as one sentinel was found unwilling to go alone, the cow had the distinguished compliment of a guard of honour of two all

night. The captain, with a scornful defiance of the spiritual, would allow of no lights to be shown, or of no extraordinary precautions to be taken. He only signified his intentions of having himself an interview with the ghost, and for that purpose he walked the deck till midnight; but the messenger from the land of spirits did not choose to show himself so early.

Let me hear no more any querulous talk of the labour of getting butter to one's bread-no person could have toiled more than the Honourable Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban to get milk for his breakfast.

The two sentries were relieved at twelve o'clock, and, for a quarter of an hour after, everything remaining dark and quiet about the haunted cow, the captain went below and turned in, joyfully antici pative of milk and cream in the morning. He left, of course, the most positive orders that the moment the ghost appeared he should be called.

Mr. Mitchell, the pious first lieutenant, remained on deck, determined to see the sequel; told the master he was much troubled in spirit, and he thought, with all due deference to the articles of war, and respect for the captain, that he was little better than an infidel, and an overbold tempter of God's providence. The master remarked in reply that it was an affair entirely out of soundings; but very sagely concluded that they should see what they should see, even if they saw nothing.

It was a beautiful night, darkly, yet, at the same time, brightly beautiful. There was no moon. The pure fires above were like scintillations from the crown of God's glory. Though the heavens were thus starred with splendours, it was deeply, though clearly, dark on the ocean. There was a gentle breeze that was only sufficient to make the sails draw, and the noble frigate walked stately, yet majestically onwards.

Forward on the main-deck the darkness was Cimmerian. When lights had been last there at the relieving of the sentinels, the cow had laid herself quietly down upon her litter, and seemed to be in a profound sleep; the first hour after midnight was passed, and all was hushed as death, save those noises that indicate what else would be absolute silence more strongly. There was the whispering ripple of the sea, the dull creaking of the tiller-ropes, and the stealthy step of the sentinels: these sounds, and these only, were painfully distinct. One bell struck, and its solemn echoes seemed to creep through the decks as if on some errand of death, and the monotonous cry of the look-outs fell drearily on the ear.

The first lieutenant and the officers of the watch had just begun to shake off their dreamy and fearful impressions, to breathe more freely, and to walk the deck with a firmer tread, when, from what was supposed to be the haunted spot, a low shriek was heard, then a bustle, followed by half-stifled cries of "The guard! the guard!"

The officers of the watch jumped down on to the main-deck, the midshipmen rushed into the cabin to call the captain, and men with and without lights rushed forward to the rescue.

Deep in the darkness of the manger there glared an apparition that might more than justify the alarm. The spot where the phan

tom was seen, (we pledge ourselves that we are relating facts,) was that part of a frigate which seamen call "the eyes of her," directly under the foremost part of the forecastle, where the cables run through the hawse-holes, and through which the bowsprit trends upwards. The whole place is called the manger. It is very often appropriated to the use of pigs until they take their turn for the butcher's knife. This was the strange locality that the ghost chose to honour with its dreadful presence.

From the united evidences of the many who saw this ghastly avatar, it appeared only to have thrust its huge head and a few feet of the forepart of its body through the hawse-hole, the remainder of its vast and voluminous tail hanging out of the ship over its bows. The frightful head and the glaring sockets of its eyes were distinctly marked in lineaments of fire. Its jaws were stupendous, and its triple row of sharp and long-fanged teeth seemed to be gnashing for something mortal to devour. It cast a pale blue halo of light around it, just sufficient to show the outlines of the den it had selected in which to make its unwelcome appearance. Noise it made none, though several of the spectators fancied that they heard a gibbering of unearthly sounds; and Mr. Littlejohn swore the next day upon his John Hamilton Moore, that it mooed dolefully like a young bullock crossed in love.

To describe the confusion on the main-deck, whilst officers, seamen, and marines were gazing on this spectre, so like the fiery spirit of the Yankee sea-serpent, is a task from which I shrink, knowing that language cannot do it adequately. The first lieutenant stood in the middle of the group, not merely transfixed, but paralysed with fear; men were tumbling over each other, shouting, praying, swearing. Up from the dark holds, like shrouded ghosts, the watch below, in their shirts, sprang from their hammocks; and for many, one look was enough, and the head would vanish immediately in the dark profound. The shouting for lights, and loaded muskets and pistols was terrible; and the orders to advance were so eagerly reiterated, that none had leisure to obey them.

But the cow herself did not present the least imposing feature in this picture of horror. She formed, as it were, the barrier between mortality and spirituality—all beyond her was horrible and spectral; by her fright she seemed to acknowledge the presence of a preternatural being. Her legs were stiff and extended, her tail standing out like that of an angered lion, and she kept a continued strain upon the halter with which she was tethered to a ring-bolt in the ship's side.

By this time several of the ward-room officers, and most of the midshipmen, had reached the scene of action. Pistols were no longer wanting, and loaded ones too. Three shots were fired into the manger, with what aim it is impossible to specify, at the spectre. They did not seem to annoy his ghostship in the least; without an indication of his beginning to grow hungry, might be deemed so. As the shot whistled past him, he worked his huge and fiery jaws most ravenously.

"Well," said the second lieutenant, "let us give the gentleman another shot, and then come to close quarters. Mr. Mitchell, you have a pistol in your hand: fire!"

"In the name of the Holy Trinity!" said the superstitious first, "there!" Bang! and the shot took effect deep in the loins of the unfortunate cow.

At this precise moment, Captain the Honourable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban rushed from his cabin forward, attired in a rich flowered silk morning-gown, in which scarlet predominated. He held a pistol cocked in each hand; and, as he broke through the crowd, he bellowed forth lustily, "Where's the ghost! let me see the ghost!" He was soon in the van of the astonished gazers; but, disappointed Fitzalban! he saw no ghost, because, as the man says in the Critic, "'twas not in sight."

Immediately the honourable captain had gained his station, the much wronged and persecuted cow, galled by her wound, with a mortal effort snapped the rope with which she was fastened, and then lowering her horned head nearly level with the deck, and flourishing her tail after the manner that an Irishman flourishes his shillelagh before he commences occipital operations, she rushed upon the crowded phalanx before her. At this instant, as if its supernatural mission had been completed, the spirit vanished.

The ideal having decamped, those concerned had to save themselves from the well followed up assaults of the real. The captain flew before the pursuing horns, d-ning the cow in all the varieties of condemnation. But she was generous, and she attached herself to him with an unwonted, or rather an unwanted, fidelity. Lanterns were crushed and men overthrown, and laughter now arose amidst the shouts of dismay. The seamen tried to impede the progress of the furious animal by throwing down before her lashed-up hammocks, and by seizing her behind by the tail: but, woe is me! the Honourable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban could not run so fast in his variegated and scarlet flowered silk dressing-gown as a cow in the agonies of death; for he had just reached that asylum of safety, his cabin-door, when the cow took him up very carefully with her horns, and first giving him a monitory shake, then with an inclination to port, she tossed him right over the ward-room skylight, and deposited him very gingerly in the turtle-tub that stood lashed on the larboard side of the half-deck. This exertion was her last; for immediately after falling upon her knees, and then gently rolling over, to use an Homeric expression, her soul issued from her wound, and sought the shades below appropriated to the souls of cows.

In the mean time, the captain was sprawling about, and contending with his turtle for room, and he stood a very good chance of being drowned even in a tub; but assistance speedily arriving, he was drawn out, and thus the world was spared a second tale of a tub. But there was something in the spirit of the aristocratic Fitzalban that neither cows, ghosts, nor turtle-haunted water could subdue. Wet as he was, and suffering also from the contusions of the cow's horns, he immediately ordered more light, and proceeded to search for the ghost,-prolific parent of all his mishaps.

Well escorted he visited the manger, but the most scrutinising search could discover nothing extraordinary. The place seemed to have been undisturbed, nor once to have departed from its usual