don't get him too bad, neither. I know it's the fashion, judgin' by the
sea yarns I've read lately, to have a Yankee skipper sort of a cross
between a prize fighter and a murderer. Fust day out of port he begins
by pickin' out the most sickly fo'mast hand aboard, mashes him up, and
then takes the next invalid. I got a book about that kind of a skipper
out of our library down home a spell ago, and the librarian said 'twas
awful popular. A strong story, she said, and true to life. Well, 'twas
strong--you could pretty nigh smell it--but as for bein' true to life,
I had my doubts. I've been to sea, command of a vessel, for a good many
years, and sometimes I'd go weeks, whole weeks, without jumpin' up and
down on a single sailor. Fact! Got my exercise other ways, I presume
likely.

"I tell you," he went on, "the main trouble with that tale of yours, as
I see it, is that you're talkin' about things you ain't ever seen. Now
there's plenty you have seen, I wouldn't wonder. Let's see, you was born
in Belfast, you said. Live there long, did you?"

"Yes, until I went away to school."

"Your father, he went to sea, did he?"

"Yes. But his ship was lost, with all hands, when I was a baby."

"But your Uncle Jim wa'n't lost. You remember him well; you said so.
Tell me something you remember."

Before the young man was aware of it, he was telling of his Uncle
Jim, of the latter's return from voyages, of his own home life, of his
mother, and of the village where he spent his boyhood. Then, led on by