“The fifth day about ten o’clock A.M. there comes up a tremendous thunder storm, and the waves run mountain high, and it blowed as though the heavens and arth was a comin’ together; and the wind and storm riz till two o’clock in the arternoon, and _increased_; and we drew an ile cloth over the hatch comin’s and companion way. And all the sails was took down, every rag on ’em, and we sailed under bare poles; and the log was flung out, and we found we was a runnin’ at the rate of fifteen knots an hour; and there come a sea and swept every thing fore and aft, and it took me, for I’d just come out of my caboose, and swept my feet right from under me, but I hung fast to the shrouds; and there wave arter wave beat agin us, and swept over us clean. And oh! dear me suz, the lightnin’ struck on the water and sissed like hot iron flung in, and the thunder crashed like a fallin’ mountain, and the sailors acted some on ’em pretty decent, and the rest on ’em like crazy folks. They ripped, and swore, and cussed, and tore distressedly; and one old feller up aloft reefin’ sail, his head was white as flax, cussed his Maker, ‘cause he didn’t send it harder.
“Oh! how I trembled when I heard him! Why he scart me a thousand times worse than the lightnin’. ‘Bout nine at night we tries the pumps, and finds three feet water in the bold, and then eight men went to pumpin’ till the pumps sucked, and the captain looked pretty serious I tell ye; and ’bout twelve o’ clock the storm went down, and all was quiet, only the sea, and that was distressedly angry; and the next mornin’ ’twas as calm, as the softest evenin’ ye ever see.
“Captain comes round and says, ‘boys, old Neptune will be round to-day, and make every one pay his bottle or be shaved,’ and sure enough, ’bout eleven the old feller comes aboard with an old tarpaulin hat on, and his jacket and breeches all tore to strings, and the water running off on him, and says, ‘captain you got any of my boys aboard?’ ‘Yis, here’s one;’ and he p’inted at _me_. ‘Well boy, what have you got for me to-day?’ ‘A bottle of wine,’ says I; and he says ‘now I’m goin’ to swear you by the crook of your elbow, and the break of the pump, that you will let no man pass without a bottle or a shave.’ So he goes round to all on board and then goes away. The captain told me he was ‘old Neptune, and lived in the ocean;’ but I was detarmined to foller him; so on I goes arter him, and I finds him snug hid under the cathead a changin’ his clothes, and then he comes on deck, and I charged him that he was the old Neptune, and finally he confessed it, and said ’twas the way all old sailors did to make every raw hand, when they got to sich a spot in the ocean, pay his bottle or be shaved with tar, soap, and an iron razor.