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What other home had I? In a day or two's time I drifted back to the large towns and the bad company, the great open country was so lonely to me, now I had lost the dogs! Two sailors picked me up next. I was a handy lad, and I got a cabin-boy's berth on board a coasting-vessel.
"You are ill, Will Ward," was Dick Darvall's first remark when there was sufficient daylight to distinguish faces. "You're another!" was the cabin-boy's quick, facetious retort, which caused Darvall to smile and had the effect of rousing the half-sleeping crew. "But you are ill, my boy," repeated the seaman earnestly.
It might be that on one bad night, when the fog lay low on the water and the rollers lunged heavily shoreward, the skipper would make a mistake. The look-out men would hear the thunder of broken water close under the bows; and then, after a brief agony of hurry and effort, the vessel beat herself to bits on the remorseless stones. In that case the little cabin-boy's troubles were soon over.
A cabin-boy's berth means dirt to live in, offal to eat, a man's work on a boy's shoulders, and the rope's-end at regular intervals. The vessel touched at a port in the Hebrides. I was as ungrateful as usual to my best benefactors; I ran away again. Some women found me, half dead of starvation, in the northern wilds of the Isle of Skye.
'They think she struck on a reef when we shipped the big sea, whispered the cabin-boy. 'Hold your jaw, boy! said the boatswain. All the same, the cabin-boy's words passed from mouth to mouth; a little chuckle was heard here and there; the men's faces became more and more ludicrously uneasy, and their suppressed laughter was on the point of bursting forth.
He most unreservedly swore "that no subordinate of his should ever sit in the same legislative body with himself; that he was a republican by birth, and knew the usages of republican governments quite as well as the best patriot among them; and although he admitted that all sorts of critters were sent to Congress in his country, no man ever knew an instance of a cabin-boy's being sent there.
But you have to thank our kind friends, the mate and his crew, as much as me, or we should have been pretty sure to have been both of us food for the fishes by this time." And so it was that the cabin-boy's attachment to Frank Oldfield became a passion a love which many waters could not quench a love that was wonderful, passing the love of women. Each day increased it.
The creature had disappeared at the moment of the cabin-boy's fall, the sudden and violent splash having completely scared him away for the instant; but scarcely had Frank reached the drowning lad, and raised him in the water, than the huge monster began to make towards them.
When he returned from London his English was probably better than the cabin-boy's will ever be, but he is a little out of practice. I had observed a couple of picturesque ruffians hovering about in the gloom of the garden; towards the end of dinner they wandered into the circle of the electric light and resolved themselves into Carmelo and Rosario.
My mate's gone, and there'll be a lot of promotion. A sailor comes aft to take mate's place, cabin-boy goes for'ard to take sailor's place, and you take the cabin-boy's place, sign the articles for the cruise, twenty dollars per month and found. Now what do you say? And mind you, it's for your own soul's sake. It will be the making of you.
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