gh,' said Herrick; 'she lives with my father. Oh, I see what
you mean,' he added. 'My real name is Herrick. No more Hay'--they had
both used the same alias--'no more Hay than yours, I dare say.'

'Clean bowled in the middle stump!' laughed the clerk. 'My name's 'Uish
if you want to know. Everybody has a false nyme in the Pacific. Lay you
five to three the captain 'as.'

'So I have too,' replied the captain; 'and I've never told my own since
the day I tore the title page out of my Bowditch and flung the damned
thing into the sea. But I'll tell it to you, boys. John Davis is my
name. I'm Davis of the Sea Ranger.'

'Dooce you are!' said Hush. 'And what was she? a pirate or a slyver?'

'She was the fastest barque out of Portland, Maine,' replied the
captain; 'and for the way I lost her, I might as well have bored a hole
in her side with an auger.'

'Oh, you lost her, did you?' said the clerk. ''Ope she was insured?'

No answer being returned to this sally, Huish, still brimming over with
vanity and conversation, struck into another subject.

'I've a good mind to read you my letter,' said he. 'I've a good fist
with a pen when I choose, and this is a prime lark. She was a barmaid
I ran across in Northampton; she was a spanking fine piece, no end
of style; and we cottoned at first sight like parties in the play. I
suppose I spent the chynge of a fiver on that girl. Well, I 'appened to
remember her nyme, so I wrote to her, and told her 'ow I had got rich,
and married a queen in the Hislands, and lived in a blooming palace.
Such a sight of crammers! I must read you one bit about my opening the
nigger parliament in a cocked 'at. It's really prime.'

The captain jumped to his feet. 'That's what you did with the paper that
I went and begged for you?' he roared.

It was perhaps lucky for Huish--it was surely in the end unfortunate for
all--that he was seized just then by one of his prostrating accesses of
cough; his comrades would have else deserted him, so bitter was their
resentment. When the fit had passed, the clerk reached out his hand,
picked up the letter, which had fallen to the earth, and tore it into
fragments, stamp and all.

'Does that satisfy you?' he asked sullenly.

'We'll say no more about it,' replied Davis.

Chapter 3. THE OLD CALABOOSE--DESTINY AT THE DOOR

The old calaboose, in which the waifs had so long harboured, is a low,
rectangular enclosure of building at the corner of a shady western
av