"Well, when I got to Singapore I was nothing but skin and bone, and
considerable of the skin had been knocked off by the marline-spike and
the mate's boots. I'd shipped for the v'yage out and back, but the first
night in port I slipped over the side, swum ashore, and never set eyes
on old Perkins again till that time in Surinam, years afterward.

"I knocked round them Singapore docks for much as a month, hoping to
get a berth on some other ship, but 'twan't no go. I fell in with a
Britisher named Hammond, 'Ammond, he called it, and as he was on the
same hunt that I was, we kept each other comp'ny. We done odd jobs now
'n' again, and slept in sailors' lodging houses when we had the price,
and under bridges or on hemp bales when we hadn't. I was too proud to
write home for money, and Hammond didn't have no home to write to, I
cal'late.

"But luck 'll turn if you give it time enough. One night Hammond come
hurrying round to my sleeping-room--that is to say, my hemp bale--and
gives me a shake, and says he:

"'Turn out, you mud 'ead, I've got you a berth.'

"'Aw, go west!' says I, and turned over to go to sleep again. But he
pulled me off the bale by the leg, and that woke me up so I sensed what
he was saying. Seems he'd found a feller that wanted to ship a couple of
fo'mast hands on a little trading schooner for a trip over to the Java
Sea.

"Well, to make a long story short, we shipped with this feller, whose
name was Lazarus. I cal'late if the Lazarus in Scriptur' had been up to