ere strolled alongside a boy rather ragged and
dirty, but with such eyes and such a countenance as would make him a
passport anywhere. Well, do ye see, we were lazing away time on board,
and waiting the captain's coming before we hauled out into the stream,
and so we coaxed the lad aboard. He either didn't know where he came
from or wouldn't tell, and when we proposed to take him to sea with us,
he readily agreed, and sure enough he sailed in the 'Sea Lion.'"

"Well, heave ahead, Bill," said one of the group, as the narrator
stopped to stove a fresh instalment of the Virginia weed in his larboard
cheek.

"Heave ahead."

"We hadn't got fairly clear of the channel," continued Bill Marline,
"before the boy had become a general favorite all over the ship. We
washed him up and bent on a new suit of toggery on him, with a reg'lar
tarpaulin, and there was almost a fight whether the forecastle or the
cabin should have him. At last it was left to the boy himself, and he
chose to remain with us in the forecastle. The boy wasn't sick an hour
on the passage until after we left the Cape of Good Hope, when the flag
halliards getting fouled, he was sent up to the peak to loosen it, and
by some lurch of the ship was throw upon deck. Why it didn't kill him
was the wonder of all, but the boy was crazy for near a month from the
blow on his head, which he got in falling, but he gradually got cured
under our captain's care.

"Well, do ye see, our captain was a regular whole-souled fellow, though
he did sometimes work up a hand's old iron pretty close for him, and so
he took the boy into the cabin and gave him a berth alongside his own,
and as he grew better took to teaching him the use of his instruments,
and mathematics, and the like. The boy they said was wonderful ready,
and learned like a book, and could take the sun and work up the ship's
course as well as the captain; but what was the funniest of all was
that, after he got well, he didn't know one of us, he had forgotten or
even how he came on board the ship, the injury had put such a stopper on
his brain that he had forgotten all that ever occurred before it. To my
mind, howdsomever, it wasn't much to forget, seeing he was little better
than a baby, and hadn't been to sea at all, and you know there aint
anything worth knowing on shore, more'n one can overhaul in a day's
leave, more or less, within hail of the sea."

"That's true," growled one or two of his messmates.

"Our shi