aid at
their feet, while they sat together in their cabin--he writing in his
log-book, and she conning her evening lesson. To the proposition that he
should give the prize so strangely obtained a free passage, and share in
the advantages to be gained by its exhibition in America, Captain Durbin
replied by showing the disappointed seaman the impossibility of the
object of these speculations being some product of Nature's freaks--some
hitherto unknown animal, with the form, but without the faculties of
man.

"Do you not see that he has clothes----"

"Clothes do ye call them!" interrupted the blunt sailor, touching the
pieces of cloth that hung around, but no longer covered the thin limbs.

"Rags, perhaps I had better say--but the rags have been clothes, woven
and sewn by man's hands--so he must have lived among men--civilized
men--and he has grown but little, as you may perceive, since those
clothes were made--therefore, he cannot have been long on the island."

"But how did he get there? Who'd leave a baby like this there by
himself?"

"That we may never know, for the boy must either be an idiot--which he
does not look like, however--or insane, or dumb--but let that be as it
will, we will do our duty by him, and I thank God for having sent us
here in time to save him."

The master of the ship usually gives the tone to those whom he commands,
and Captain Durbin found no difficulty in obtaining the help of his men
in his kind intentions to the boy so strangely brought amongst them. By
kind, yet rough hands, he was washed, his hair was cut and combed, and a
suit of clean, though coarse garments, hastily fitted to him by the best
tailor among them--fitted, not with the precision of Stultz certainly,
but sufficiently well to enable him to walk in them without danger of
walking on them or of leaving them behind. But he showed no intention of
availing himself of these capabilities. Wherever they carried him he
went without resistance--wherever they placed him he remained--he ate
the food that was offered him--but no word escaped his lips, no
voluntary movement was made by him, no look marked his consciousness of
aught that passed before him. He had again assumed his only shield from
violence--cunning. He could account in no way for his being left
unmolested, except from the belief, freely expressed before him, that
nature, by depriving him of intelligence, or of speech, had unfitted him
for labor, and he resolved to do n