One winter day when Ralph Pell and his grandfather met at
breakfast-time, a northeast wind was whistling around the corner of the
old mansion, and hurling the snow with a musical tapping against the
window-panes.

The white-haired sailor looked up at the picture of the noble animal,
saying, with a touch of affection in his voice: "Well, Nero, good old
fellow, this is one of the kind of days you used to love. How you
enjoyed plunging and rolling into a big snow drift, and making the white
flakes fly!"

"Grandpop," said Ralph, "you have never told me about Nero. Did he ever
go to sea with you?"

"Go to sea with me, boy? Why, Nero was first mate with me once, and a
good one, too, when I had a Chinese crew on my vessel."

"Oh, do tell me the story, please, grandpop," exclaimed Ralph, "for it
must be a funny one."

"Um! Not so funny as you think, perhaps; but I'll spin you the yarn, and
let you judge. Well, when I was a strapping young fellow, 'way back in
the forties, I sailed out of the port of Boston as mate of the bark
_Eagle_, bound to Hong-Kong, which place, as your geography tells you,
is in China. We had a quick passage out, but found nothing in the way of
a good freight just then offering for home, so we remained for several
weeks with our mud-hook--as sailors call the anchor--dropped in the same
place. It was the unhealthy season, and, one by one, our crew sickened,
and were sent on shore to the hospital. Next the Captain was taken down,
and I found myself, with the second mate, the only man left on board the
vessel.

"Just at this time the Captain was offered a good paying charter to
carry a cargo up the coast, so he ordered me to ship a new crew for the
trip, and to take his place as Captain, saying that he would be himself
again when I returned. There was not a white sailor to be engaged in the
port, so I shipped a crew of coolies, as the lower class of natives are
called, stowed my cargo, and set sail; but as this class of Chinamen are
very dirty in the way of their clothes and habits, I took care to lock
the door of the forecastle-house, in which the sailors sleep, and to
make the natives take up sleeping quarters on a lot of mats thrown on
top of the cargo in the hold.

"As ill luck would have it, the poor second mate, who had made several
voyages to the pig-tail country, and could talk pigeon-English so as to
be understood by the moon-eyed sailors, went out of his head with the
fever, and jumped ove