"In 1860," was his prompt reply.

"And you sailed in the Flying Cloud nine years before that, and this
is 1913--why, that was sixty-two years ago," I charged.

"And I was seven years old," he chuckled. "My mother was stewardess
on the Flyin' Cloud. I was born at sea. I was boy when I was
twelve, on the Herald o' the Morn, when she made around in ninety-
nine days--half the crew in irons most o' the time, five men lost
from aloft off the Horn, the points of our sheath-knives broken
square off, knuckle-dusters an' belayin'-pins flyin', three men shot
by the officers in one day, the second mate killed dead an' no one to
know who done it, an' drive! drive! drive! ninety-nine days from land
to land, a run of seventeen thousand miles, an' east to west around
Cape Stiff!"

"But that would make you sixty-nine years old," I insisted.

"Which I am," he retorted proudly, "an' a better man at that than the
scrubby younglings of these days. A generation of 'em would die
under the things I've been through. Did you ever hear of the Sunny
South?--she that was sold in Havana to run slaves an' changed her
name to Emanuela?"

"And you've sailed the Middle Passage!" I cried, recollecting the old
phrase.

"I was on the Emanuela that day in Mozambique Channel when the Brisk
caught us with nine hundred slaves between-decks. Only she wouldn't