NEXT day, (Sunday,) a fresh north-west breeze blew all day, and we made but little progress toward New York. The weather was pleasant, and the ship did not leak so much as before. The sailors were busy all day, repairing the damages, as best they could, securing the rigging and so forth; the carpenter nailed some boards on the almost bare framework of the bulwarks, made another inspection of the hold, and got some of the leaks stopped: especially did he secure one of the stern planks, that was so loose that a man might have pulled it off with his hands.

On Monday morning, the sea was perfectly calm. Not the slightest breeze stirred, the surface of the water was glassy, and scarcely any swell was perceptible. [They have swells at sea, as well as on land.]

By and by, as we laid perfectly motionless, we saw a steamer coming from the southward, and the captain ran up his “ensign,” as a signal that he wanted to communicate with her. It was the Moro Castle, from Havana for New York. As she passed astern of us, within half a cable’s length, Captain Collins called out:

“This is the Brewster, leaking badly and returning in distress! Please report me in New York!”

“Ay, ay,” replied the captain of the steamer, as she rushed by.

On Monday evening, a stiff north-west breeze sprung up again, as though determined to keep us away from New York harbor; and it lasted a whole week.

On Thursday, the twenty-eighth, after we had been tacking about for three days without gaining much distance, a pilot-boat came dancing out to us, over the rough waves, and a pilot left her in a yawl and came aboard the Brewster.

“Have you any Newspapers?” was the question the captain and I asked him, in a breath, as he came up over the bulwark.

I shall never forget the anxiety and impatience with which we asked this question. We had been absent from the world, as it were, about three weeks: and so full of terror and danger had the period been that it seemed like a moderate life-time. I almost fancied that my country might have undergone a revolution during my absence, and that I might find it necessary, on going ashore, to bend my solitary knee to a crowned monarch. However, I saw no indications of any such state of things, in the World, Herald and Times with which the pilot responded to our earnest inquiries. Things seemed to be going on about as usual in Gotham, and the remainder of the United States: the markets appeared to be good; whisky, cotton and iron were quoted at fair figures: while the usual healthy number of fires, accidents and murders were reported in the proper columns.

On Monday morning, the first day of April, having been all this time beating about in front of the harbor, we found ourselves becalmed again, about seventy miles from New York. The sky was heavily clouded, a dull, damp, misty rain fell, and the barometer was low. Every thing augured ugly weather. Soundings were taken, which indicated that we were in fifty fathoms water. Other sails could be seen on all sides.

By and by, we saw a small side-wheel steamer coming toward us, from the direction of the harbor; whereupon the captain said to the pilot:

“Don’t you think that’s a steamer coming to take us in tow?”

“It looks very like it,” was the reply.

The captain then called the carpenter and instructed him to remove from the stern of the ship the board on which the name Brewster was painted.

“What is that for, Captain?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?” he replied.

“No.”

“How dull you are,” said he.

“You would be dull, too,” I retorted, “if you had never been out of sight of land but three or four times in your life. But, tell me—what is it for?”

“Why, you see, we have already been reported in distress; and if that fellow coming should recognize us, he would ask a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars to tow us in.”

“Ah?” said I, somewhat enlightened. “Is that their style?”

“Yes, indeed: let them get a fellow in a tight place once, as we are now, and they’ll pile it on—no telling how high.—Hurry, carpenter.”

The steamer reached us at last, crossed our stern, and with a graceful curve, came round on our port side, within hailing distance.

“Good morning,” said the captain of the little steamer—the Wm. Fletcher—who stood in the pilot-house.

“Good morning,” returned Captain Collins.

“Where are you from?” asked the steamer captain, looking curiously at the blank place where the Brewster’s name ought to have been.

“San Francisco,” responded Captain Collins.

“What vessel?”

This was a stunner, and Collins, after hesitating a moment, pretended not to have heard, and said:

“How do the Highlands bear from here?”

“About north-west,” was the response. “What ves——”

“What will you charge to tow me in?” interrupted Captain Collins.

“Three hundred dollars,” was the prompt reply.

“O, nonsense,” rejoined Collins. “That’s too much. That’s all they charge when the harbor is full of ice.”

“Our regular price,” said the other.

“O, no, captain,” said Collins; “come, be reasonable. I’ll give you a hundred and fifty.”

“Couldn’t do it, really.”

“Well,” rejoined Collins, “I think we will have a favorable wind soon, and I can get in without being towed.”

“Yes,” retorted the other, ironically; “quite likely. If you have no barometer on board, I’ll lend you one. The mercury has gone clean down out of sight, and we’re going to have a deuce of a blow. I’ll venture it will be a nor’-wester, too.”

“Pooh! No danger. I’ll sail in.”

“All right,” said the steamer captain. “Now that I come to think, I’m sorry I made so good an offer. I begin to believe you have an underwriter’s job of it. You haven’t been to San Francisco.”

“I’ll give you two hundred dollars,” said Collins, without paying any attention to the other’s last remark.

“No, not a cent lower than three hundred. I wouldn’t do it for that, if I had not already offered to. I’ll swear, I believe that is the Brewster! We heard of it.”

“The what?” said Collins.

“The Brewster. Come, isn’t it now? Captain Adams, of the Moro Castle, reported her returning in distress.”

“What do I know of the Blueskin? I never heard of such a ship.—Come, I’ll give you two hundred and fifty.”

“No, three hundred; not a cent less. I’ll put you alongside the pier for that.”

“O, you’re a hard one! Well, you can tow us in, and I’ll lick you the first time I catch you in New York. Mind, now, you are to take the ship to the pier whenever I want you to. I will anchor in the harbor to-day.”

“All right; I’ll stick to that.”

“Well, Mr. Gorham, give him our hawser.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

The hawser is a very thick, heavy line, used for towing or making a ship fast; and one end of this rope the sailors gladly threw over to the steamer, while the other was made fast to the capstan on the forecastle deck.

We arrived in the harbor about four o’clock that afternoon, and had just cast anchor when we were visited with a rough north-west gale. But we did not care now, we were safe.

We anchored near Hart’s Island, and I got on the little steamer, with Captain Collins, and went up to the city. We landed at the foot of Catharine street, and my glad heart never before bounded as it did when, after the perils of the past three weeks, I stepped upon terra firma once more. I felt that I wouldn’t care if somebody would knock a hole in the bottom of the nasty old sea and let all the salty water run out. It isn’t of any use, anyhow, only to raise sharks, and whales, and mermaids, and porpoises, and sea-horses, and sea-serpents, and such like hideous creatures, to float iron-clads and drown people; and for idiots that never saw it to write pretty verses about. I am not habitually a fighting man; on the contrary, quite a peaceably-disposed citizen of the United States; but if I ever come across the cuss that wrote,

I’ll lick him or he’ll lick me!