I tell yer
that I'm not claiming as to ever have seen a mermaid, but what I am
saying is this and that is if anybody has ever seen one of them things
I'm that man. I'm not making no false claims, however, none
whatsoever."

I carefully placed my shovel against the wheelbarrow and seating
myself upon a stump prepared to listen to my companion. He was a chief
of many cruises and for some unaccountable reason had fixed on me as
being a suitable recipient for his discourse. One more hash mark on
his arm would have made him look like a convict. I listened and in the
meanwhile many mounds of sand urgently in need of shoveling remained
undisturbed. Upon this sand I occasionally cast a reflective and
apprehensive eye. The chief, noticing this, nudged me in the ribs with
an angular elbow.

"Don't mind that, sonny," he said, "I'll pump the fear-o'-God into the
heart of any P.O. what endeavors to disturb you. Trust me."

I did.

"Now getting back to this mermaid," he began in a confidential voice,
"what I say as I didn't claim to have saw. It happened this way and
what I'm telling you, sonny, is the plain, unvarnished facts of the
case, take 'em or leave 'em as you will. They happened and I'm here to
tell the whole world so."

"I have every confidence in you, chief," I replied mildly.

"It is well you have," he growled, scanning my face suspiciously.
"It's well you have, you louse."

"Why, chief," I exclaimed in an aggrieved voice, "isn't that rather an
unappetizing word to apply to a fellow creature?"

"Mayhap, young feller," he replied, "mayhap. I ain't no deep sea
dictionary diver, I ain't, but all this has got nothing to do with
what I was about to tell you. It all happened after this manner,
neither no more nor no less."

He cleared his throat and gazed with undisguised hostility across the
parade ground. Thus he began:

"It was during the summer of 1888, some thirty odd years ago," quoth
he. "I was a bit young then, but never such a whey face as you,
certainly not."

"Positively," said I, in hearty agreement.

"At that time," he continued, not noticing my remark, "I was resting
easy on a soft job between cruises as night watchman on one of them
P.O. docks at Dover. The work warn't hard, but it was hard enough. I
would never have taken it had it not been for the unpleasant fact that
owing to some little trouble I had gotten into at one of the pubs my
wife was in one of her nasty, brow-beating moods. At these