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"Why, it's settled that I'm to go in this ship to learn to be a sailor, so I've come on board at once to make myself useful," I replied. He eyed me curiously from head to foot as if I was some strange animal, and then burst into a loud laugh. "You learn to be a sailor? you make yourself useful? you chaw-bacon. Why, the hay-seed is still sticking in your hair, and the dust ain't off your shoes yet.
"We don't justify it, and I'm the president," said Sid, with a look of importance, "and no one of us that you see did it." "I hope not. Sometimes folks are not lucky, and if any of your fathers went trampin' round and couldn't get work, you wouldn't like to have any body throw hay-seed on him." "No, that's so," said Charlie. "It's too bad!" The man turned to go down stairs.
Ben soon learned all about a ship, for, having been from his childhood on the water, things were not so strange to him as they are to a boy who had come from some inland place with, as Tom said, the hay-seed in his hair. He was as active and intelligent and daring as any of the boys in the ship, not only of his own size, but of those much bigger and older.
In winter, especially, they sweep by me and around me in flocks, the Canada sparrow, the snow-bunting, the shore-lark, the pine grosbeak, the red-poll, the cedar-bird, feeding upon frozen apples in the orchard, upon cedar-berries, upon maple-buds, and the berries of the mountain ash, and the celtis, and upon the seeds of the weeds that rise above the snow in the field, or upon the hay-seed dropped where the cattle have been foddered in the barn-yard or about the distant stack; but yet taking no heed of man, in no way changing their habits so as to take advantage of his presence in nature.
About all he could see was an old hat, and a very bad hat at that. "Let's sprinkle him! We can say we only saw a hat," and immediately scraping up with his foot a quantity of hay-seed, he liberally sprinkled the seedy hat. It was like unto like. "Now look here," said Sid, "that was mean. If your father wore an old hat, how would you like to have a feller sprinkle hay-seed on it?"
"Indeed you have, Bluff," said I, highly pleased at the intelligence and forethought he had shown. It proved that his wits were sharpening at a great rate, that in fact he had got the hay-seed out of his hair very rapidly.
The mates, of course, and the boat-steerers, and also two or three of the crew, had been to sea before, but only on whaling voyages; and the greater part of the crew were raw hands, just from the bush, and had not yet got the hay-seed out of their hair. The mizzen topsail hung in the buntlines until everything was furled forward.
"Fit for chargers for the Duke of Marlborough himself, or suited to carry any noblemen as hunters across the country." "I have not so long ploughed salt water as not to know something about ploughing the land," answered Jack; "don't you see the hay-seed still in my hair?
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