"Could he, faith?" said another, "then I wonder he did not make his eternal fortin making almanacs."
"But what is a centurion?" asked a third.
"Centurion?" said old Jones, "why she's a sixty-four gun ship; I've seen her often enough at Spithead, but I forget now whether she was in the first of June[4] or not."
"Then I 'spose she was convoying the craft that Paul was in," observed another blue-jacket.
This knotty point being satisfactorily cleared up, the reader proceeded: "And when the south wind blew softly, supposing they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete."
"Now you see," said the boatswain, "just so sure as you have gentle breezes from the south'ard, you'll have a thundering Levanter at the back of 'em."
"Yes, yes," said a tar, "I know that to my sorrow. I was up the Straits last v'y'ge, 'way up to Smyrna and Zante, arter reasons,[5] and we ketch'd one of these thundering Levanters, and was druv 'way to h--ll, away up the Gulf of Venus (Venice); yes, I've been boxing about the Arch of the Billy Goat[6] 'most too long, not to know a little so'thin' about the weather there."
The reader continued: "But not long after, there arose against it a tempestuous wind."
"There," said Jones, "didn't I tell you so? I knowed you'd have a real sneezer in a varse or two."
"Called Euroclydon," continued the reader, finishing the verse.
"What! avast there! overhaul that last word again."
"A tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," repeated the reader.
"Well, you may call it a Rock-me-down, but I say the regular-built name on't is Levanter; but then I s'pose them thunderin' printers puts in any thing they're a mind to."
The reading proceeded without much more interruption, except that the honest tars, who had been up the Mediterranean, were not a little puzzled by the strange names of places, and could not imagine what part of the world the saint had got into.
"About midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country; and sounded, and found it twenty fathoms; and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms."
"Egad, I should think they was drawin' nigh to some country pretty thunderin' fast too, when they shoalened their water so quick, from twenty to fifteen faddom."