Oh, dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And here
am I, old, forsaken, forlorn and alone, arranging to get that
argument out of somebody again.

When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying
that he keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer always
had several high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the
same ones over and over again, and did not care to change to newer
and fresher ones. He played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed
hearing himself play. So did I. He had a notion that a flute
would keep its health better if you took it apart when it was not
standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty it took its rest,
disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the breast-board. When the
Pennsylvania blew up and became a drifting rack-heap freighted with
wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother Henry among them),
pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably asleep and never
knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his pilot-
house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank
through the ragged cavern where the hurricane deck and the boiler
deck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on
top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog
of scalding and deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose
his head: long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it,
in any and all emergencies. He held his coat-lappels to his nose
with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with the
other till he found the joints of his flute, then he is took
measures to save himself alive, and was successful. I was not on
board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain
Klinefelter. The reason--however, I have told all about it in the