many of 'em that Abe can say over, and he can glue a tune to 'em
well, for he's got that kind of a memory that's loose, but stringy
and long, and he always had. There's only Abe and Stevey Todd and me
left of the _Hebe Maitland's_ crew, unless Sadler and Little
Irish maybe, for I left them in Burmah, and they may be there. But
what I was going to say, Pemberton, is, I made a mistake somewhere."

"Why," said Pemberton, "there you may be right."

"For I was that kind of young one," the captain went on, "which if
he's blown up with dynamite, he comes down remarking it's breezy up
there. I was that careless."

Then we drew nearer and knew that Captain Buckingham was hauling up
his anchor, and maybe would take us on a long way, which he surely
did. The afternoon slipped on, hour by hour, and the fire snapped and
cast its red light in our faces, and the kettle sung and the storm
outside kept up its mad business, and the surf its monotone.

"I was so, when I was a lad of eighteen or nineteen," Captain
Buckingham said. "I was a wild one, though not large, but limber and
clipper-built, and happy any side up, and my notion of human life was
that it was something like a cake-walk, and something like a Bartlett
pear, as being juicy anywhere you bit in."




CHAPTER II.