"What on earth, or sea, ever set the old man off again?" inquired
Crosby, in an aggrieved whisper. "It's two weeks since he's given us any
Central American independent flapdoodle--long enough for those nigger
injins to have had half a dozen revolutions. You know that the vessels
that put into San Juan have saluted one flag in the morning, and have
been fired at under another in the afternoon."

"Hush!" said Miss Keene. "He's so kind! Look at him now, taking off the
pinafores of those children and tidying them. He is kinder to them than
their nurse, and more judicious than their mother. And half his talk
with Mrs. Markham now is only to please her, because she thinks she
knows politics. He's always trying to do good to somebody."

"That's so," exclaimed Brace, eager to share Miss Keene's sentiments;
"and he's so good to those outlandish niggers in the crew. I don't see
how the captain could get on with the crew without him; he's the only
one who can talk their gibberish and keep them quiet. I've seen him
myself quietly drop down among them when they were wrangling. In my
opinion," continued the young fellow, lowering his voice somewhat
ostentatiously, "you'll find out when we get to port that he's stopped
the beginning of many a mutiny among them."

"I reckon they'd make short work of a man like him," said Winslow, whose
superciliousness was by no means lessened by the community of sentiment
between Miss Keene and Brace. "I reckon, his political reforms, and his
poetical high-falutin' wouldn't go as far in the forecastle among live
men as it does in the cabin with a lot of women. You'll more likely
find that he's been some sort of steward on a steamer, and he's
working his passage with us. That's where he gets that smooth,