Fascinating Historical Works
| ABRAHAM LINCOLN. |
| THE BOYS OF '76. |
| THE STORY OF LIBERTY. |
| OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES. |
| BUILDING THE NATION. |
A History of the Rebellion in Four Volumes:
| DRUM-BEAT OF THE NATION. |
| MARCHING TO VICTORY. |
| REDEEMING THE REPUBLIC. |
| FREEDOM TRIUMPHANT. |
Nine Volumes. Profusely Illustrated. Square 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $3.00 each.
Mr. Coffin avoids the formality of historical narrative, and presents his material in the shape of personal anecdotes, memorable incidents, and familiar illustrations. He reproduces events in a vivid, picturesque narrative.—N. Y. Tribune.
Mr. Coffin writes interestingly; he uses abundance of incident; his style is pictorial and animated, he takes a sound view of the inner factors of national development and progress; and his pages are plentifully sprinkled with illustrations.—Literary World, Boston.
Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.
[FROM CHUM TO CHUM.]
BY GASTON V. DRAKE.
III.—FROM BOB TO JACK.
Dear Jack,—I got your letter the day we came aboard this ship and I was so much interested with what was going on here that I put it in my pocket to read next day. The trouble with the next day was what I might have expected. I wasn't seasick at all but something I had for dinner didn't agree with me and I lay down all day and wished I was ashore. As an old man who stood near me said "they run trolly cars all over the land where you don't want 'em, but out at sea when you'd give ten dollars to be carried ashore in one they don't have 'em." I'd have gone ashore on a shingle if I could have. If you can imagine the Mountain House dancing around like a cork, 'way up in the air one minute and fifty feet lower down the next you'll get some idea about what I've been going through. I'd have enjoyed it though if I hadn't eaten that thing that disagreed with me, for to people that don't get seasick the moviness of the whole business is great.
There's a sailor on the New York that's had almost as many thrillers as Sandboys and between you and me I think he could talk Sandboys all around the block. He's been a pirate, he told me, but a nice kind of a pirate. He says he was called the Chesterfield of the Black Flag because he always did what he did politely no matter how horrible. If he attacked a ship at night he always did it in a dress suit and things like that, and if there were ladies aboard of any ship he captured and he had to lock 'em up in the hold he always apologized for doing it, and hoped they'd have a good time. He was brought up in Salem Massachusetts where he imbibed a love of the sea and learned manners—those are his own words, particularly imbibed. That word shows what a fine man he really is. His language is really splendid. Most pirates, he told me, wasn't fit to associate with gentlemen because they couldn't talk like gentlemen, but he felt that he could go anywhere, even into a lady's parlor and talk and never say a word that "wouldn't go with the furniture," as he put it, without swearing off a bit of his piracy neither. He has charge of the steamer-chairs on board this boat and nobody but me knows who he really is. He hasn't been on shore for five years because he says there's a price on his head. Just as soon as the boat gets into port he takes a dozen cans of sardines and a box of crackers and goes and hides up under the bowsprit and lives there on the sardines and crackers until the ship starts to sea again, when he comes out and takes charge of the chairs. That's how I came to know him. I get up early and go out on deck and he tells me all the thrillers he knows.
He had an awful experience last trip over. He was putting away the chairs one night when all of a sudden he saw one of the English detectives that had been looking for him for years coming along the deck and in the moonlight the detective saw him and recognized him at once.
"Aha!" said he. "Run to earth at last, Chesterfield."
"Not as I know on," said the sailor. "Seems to me I'm run to sea." And then he gave a wild ominous laugh. "I'm very glad to see you," he continued. "How are Mrs. Detective and the children?"
"You haven't lost any of your manners, Chesterfield," said the detective; "but they don't go with me. You're my pirate!" And he laid his hands on Chesterfield's shoulder.
"Pardon me," said Chesterfield. "But really my dear Mr. Detective you don't realize your peril. I could throw you overboard in two seconds, and if it wasn't an exceedingly impolite thing to push a gentleman of your standing into the water where you'd get your clothes spoiled I'll be jiggered if I wouldn't do it. Can't I summon assistance for you?"
"I'll summon it quick enough!" cried the detective rudely not even thanking Chesterfield for his offer, and he ran to one of those big air funnels that came up through the decks and hollered help down it, supposing that it lead into the cabin where the stewards stay; and Chesterfield just took him by the coat tails and pitched him head first through the funnel into the hold, where the fellow could howl to his heart's content and nobody'd hear him because he landed way below the lowest deck on a bale of cotton and there he staid until the ship got into port—and when he came out he was so excited that nobody'd believe what he said, he spoke so sort of crazy and he was arrested for a stowaway. Chesterfield of course had gone and hid under the bowsprit, and even if folks had believed the detective they'd have thought he'd escaped. But to show how polite he was, every morning Chesterfield would go to the funnel when nobody was looking and call out good-morning to the detective and drop down two sandwiches and a bottle of ginger-ale so he wouldn't starve.
When the pirate isn't on duty I don't have quite as much fun, though I have fun enough. We have to eat by a time-table. Soup comes at half past six, fish at twenty minutes to seven, lobster patties at ten minutes to seven, roast beef at seven, and so on, and I don't like it a bit. I don't ever want anything but soup and pie. The soup comes in early enough but you have to wait an hour and forty minutes for the pie and it's slow work. I asked the Captain if I couldn't have my pie at six forty and he said he'd be glad to let me only discipline had to be kept up and if the waiters were allowed to bring in pie out of its turn it would upset the whole system an' we'd get nothing but chaos. I don't know what chaos is; we've never had any at home and I never saw it on a bill of fare anywhere, but Pop says it's no good and spoils one's digestion.
The pirate gave me a pointer for coming home. He said there was a boy on the New York two years ago that had a pair of roller skates, and on very rough days he'd put 'em on and stand up near the bow and when the bow went up with the waves the boy would slide 'way down to the stern on his skates without a bit of trouble, and then back he'd go when she pitched the other way. It seems to me that's a great scheme and I'm going to try it. I always did like skating and the decks are bully for it, smooth as a park road.
The scenery isn't much so I won't try to tell you about it. It's nothing but water all the time, and when we get up in the morning you seem to be in just the same place you were last night.
The gong has just rung for dinner, and I must go. Maybe in a few days I'll write to you again, but I'm going to mail this letter to you now, because the pirate says maybe to-morrow we'll meet the sister ship to this one going back to New York, and he thinks if I can catch the eye of the Captain of the Paris, perhaps he'll stop long enough to take this letter aboard and carry it home to you.
Yours with love to Sandboys,
Bob.