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I remember being struck by the curious circumstance that the ex-seaman should have taken the trouble to bring his "cat" with him to a mining camp. He must have had an affection for the horrible thing. I will now relate how I very nearly became the discoverer of the world-famed Kimberley Mine.

He was an ex-seaman and beachcomber who made regular voyages to southern ports and imported personally conducted invoices of talking parrots and dialectic paroquets. He had a stiff knee, neck, and nerve. I had gone to him to buy a parrot to present, at Christmas, to my Aunt Joanna.

Denzil's uncle Samuel Quarrier busied in establishing a sugar-refinery in his native town, received the young man with amiable welcome, and entertained him for half a year. The ex-seaman then resolved to join his parents abroad, as a good way of looking about him. He found his mother on her death-bed. In consequence of her decease, Denzil became possessed of means amply sufficient for a bachelor.

The ex-seaman of thirty-nine, on whose wisdom and ubiquity the scheme depended, was to live in the meanwhile without care or fear.

"Just so, sir," said the ex-seaman, with a look of satisfaction, "I know'd you wouldn't be doin' that in a hurry, so I've comed to have a talk with 'e about it." "Very good, sit down," said Frank, "and let us consider it. In the first place, I regret to say that I have not been taught any trade, so that I cannot become a blacksmith or a carpenter or anything of that sort.

The story of how Bullen's MS. was accepted, and, therefore, how Bullen became within a very few months, from an absolutely unknown ex-seaman struggling to keep himself and his family from starvation, a popular writer and lecturer, is worth recording. It shows how great a part pure luck plays in a man's life, and especially in the lives of men of letters.

The ex-seaman of thirty-nine, on whose wisdom and ubiquity the scheme depended, was to live in the meanwhile without care or fear.

Not until many minutes more had passed did the three officers of the "Dodger" cease their efforts to find a duplicate plate for the motor. Kellogg and another of the seamen, though they met their chance of death with grit enough, broke loose into mutterings that must have made the ears of ex-seaman Morton burn, wherever that worthy was.