aid Terry: "sure an' a
growin' b'y has to ate more'n a grown man, so as to get flesh to grow
wid."

"Can't do it," said Jerry, "an' won't do it. Didn't mind it so much
afore, but now we'se got to 'commonize. Bar's ebber so many more
moufs aboard now, an' all on 'em eat like sin. Dis yer calm keeps us
out heah in one spot, an' when we're ebber a goin' to get to de end
ov de vyge's more'n I can tell. No use frowin' away our val'ble
'visiums on dis yer boy--make him eat soap fat and oakum--good enough
for him. No 'casium for him to be eatin' a hundred times more'n all
de res ob us. If he wants to eat he'll hab to find his own 'visiums,
an' ketch a shark, an' I'll put it in pickle for he own private use."

With these words Jericho turned away with deep trouble and perplexity
visible on his ebon brow, and Biler, pocketing a few potatoes and
turnips, climbed to the mast-head, where he sat gazing in a
melancholy way into space.

To Terry these new comers were most welcome. At a distance he
professed to hate and despise the French; but now that they appeared
face to face, his hate was nowhere, and in its place there was
nothing but a most earnest desire to form an eternal friendship with
the shipwrecked seamen. There was certainly one difficulty in the way
which was of no slight character; and that was, that neither of them
knew the language of the other. But Terry was not easily daunted, and
the very presence of a difficulty was enough to make him feel eager
to triumph over it.

In his first approaches he made the very common mistake of addressing
the French sailors as though they were deaf. Thus he went up to them
one after the other, shaking hands with each, and shouting in their
ears as loud as he could, "_How do yez do_?" "_Good day_." "_The top
av the mornin' to yez_." To which the good-natured Frenchmen
responded in a sympathetic way, shaking his hand vigorously,--and
grinning and chattering. Terry kept this up for some time; but at
length it became somewhat monotonous, and he set his wits to work to
try to discover some more satisfactory mode of effecting a
communication with them. The next way that he thought of was
something like the first, and, like the first, is also frequently
resorted to by those who have occasion to speak to foreigners. It was
to address them in broken English, or rather in a species of baby
talk; for to Terry it seemed no more than natural that this sort of
dialect would be more intelligib