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Of course, they meant by this insulting comparison to insinuate that I am too small to be a sailor. But a boy-sailor surely I am big enough for that? I have heard of sailor boys not so old as I am. What size am I? How tall, I should like to know? Oh! if I only had a carpenter's rule I would soon settle that point! How thoughtless of me not to have measured myself before leaving home!
Was it the scream of the sea-mew, the shriek of the frigate-bird, or the hoarse note of the nelly? None of these. The boy-sailor was acquainted with the cries of all three, and of many other sea-birds besides. It was not the call of a bird that had fallen so unexpectedly on his ear, but a note of far different intonation. It more resembled a voice, a human voice, the voice of a child!
Little William loved Lilly Lalee with such love as a lad may feel for one of his own age, a love perhaps the sweetest in life, if not the most lasting. Inspired by this juvenile passion, and by the apprehensions he had for its object, the boy-sailor did not sleep very soundly.
If it was not the voice of a girl, a very young girl, then the boy-sailor had never listened to the prattling of his younger sister, or the conversation of his little female playmates. If it was a young mermaid, then most assuredly could mermaids talk: for the sound was exactly like a string or series of words uttered in conversation! Ben must be aroused from his slumber.
"What sort o' voice?" "Like a boy's voice, just like his." "Who you mean?" "The boy-sailor aboard the ship. O, listen! There it is again; and surely I hear another?" "Gorramity! little gal, you 'peak de troof. Sure 'nuff dere am a voice, two ob dat same. One am like de boy we 'peak 'bout, odder more like a man o' full groaf. I wonder who dey can be.
A cry arose, "Back to the Catamaran!" and in a score of seconds the boy-sailor was swimming alongside the A.B. for the raft; while the Coromantee, with Lilly Lalee hoisted upon his left shoulder, was cleaving the water in the same direction. Another minute and all four were aboard the embarkation they had so lately abandoned, once more saved from the perils of the deep!
I was fearful, therefore, that this might be an obstacle to my being taken as a boy-sailor; for I had really made up my mind to offer myself as such on board the Inca. With regard to "John," my apprehensions were very great. On the first impulse, I thought of no other plan than to give him the slip, and leave him to go home without me.
There was another youth of the same party, who perchance enjoyed the merriment, but who looked as if he could have still more enjoyed melancholy. He was seated next to Springall, on the rude bench; and the boy-sailor treated him with such marks of attention, as manifested that he regarded him more in the light of a superior, than as an equal.
"A shark!" cried the boy-sailor, catching a glance of some large fish at some distance out in the water on the larboard bow, the direction in which Snowball had pointed. "Shark! nuffin ob de kind," rejoined the negro; "diff'rent sort ob fish altogedder. If him wa shark, de albacore no stay hyar. Dey go up to him, and dart all 'bout im, jess like de lilly birds when dey see big hawk or de vulture.
But the gaze of the boy-sailor soon became fixed; and upon an object which caused him to give utterance to two distinct exclamations, distinct in point of time, as different in signification. The first was an ejaculation, or rather a series of phrases expressing a jocular surprise, the second a cry of serious alarm.
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