ay? How did
you get here? and where are you going?"

"Sir," replied Israel very humbly, "I am going to my regular duty, if
you will but let me. I belong to the maintop, and ought to be now
engaged in preparing the topgallant stu'n'-sail for hoisting."

"Belong to the maintop? Why, these men here say you have been trying to
belong to the foretop, and the mizzentop, and the forecastle, and the
hold, and the waist, and every other part of the ship. This is
extraordinary," he added, turning upon the junior officers.

"He must be out of his mind," replied one of them, the sailing-master.

"Out of his mind?" rejoined the officer-of-the-deck. "He's out of all
reason; out of all men's knowledge and memories! Why, no one knows him;
no one has ever seen him before; no imagination, in the wildest flight
of a morbid nightmare, has ever so much as dreamed of him. Who _are_
you?" he again added, fierce with amazement. "What's your name? Are you
down in the ship's books, or at all in the records of nature?"

"My name, sir, is Peter Perkins," said Israel, thinking it most prudent
to conceal his real appellation.

"Certainly, I never heard that name before. Pray, see if Peter Perkins
is down on the quarter-bills," he added to a midshipman. "Quick, bring
the book here."

Having received it, he ran his fingers along the columns, and dashing
down the book, declared that no such name was there.

"You are not down, sir. There is no Peter Perkins here. Tell me at once
who are you?"

"It might be, sir," said Israel, gravely, "that seeing I shipped under
the effects of liquor, I might, out of absent-mindedness like, have
given in some other person's name instead of my own."

"Well, what name have you gone by among your shipmates since you've
been aboard?"

"Peter Perkins, sir."

Upon this the officer turned to the men around, inquiring whether the
name of Peter Perkins was familiar to them as that of a shipmate. One
and all answered no.

"This won't do, sir," now said the officer. "You see it won't do. Who
are you?"

"A poor persecuted fellow at your service, sir."

"_Who_ persecutes you?"

"Every one, sir. All hands seem to be against me; none of them willing
to remember me."

"Tell me," demanded the officer earnestly, "how long do you remember
yourself? Do you remember yesterday morning? You must have come into
existence by some sort of spontaneous combustion in the hold. Or were
you fired aboard from the enemy, last ni