“I don’t want to be a sailor,” replied Joey, “but I must do something to get my living. You are very kind: will you tell me what to do?”
“Why, do you know, when I saw you come up to me, when I was looking at the pictures, in your frock and trousers, you put me in mind, because you are so much like him, of a poor little boy who was drowned the other day alongside of an India ship; that’s why I stared, for I thought you were he, at first.”
“How was he drowned, poor fellow?” responded Joey.
“Why, you see, his aunt is a good old soul, who keeps a bumboat, and goes off to the shipping.”
“What’s a bumboat?”
“A boat full of soft tommy, soldiers, pipes, and backey, rotten apples, stale pies, needles and threads, and a hundred other things; besides a fat old woman sitting in the stern sheets.”
Joey stared; he did not know that “soft tommy” meant loaves of bread, or that “soldiers” was the term for red-herrings. He only thought that the boat must be very full.
“Now, you see that little Peter was her right-hand man, for she can’t read and write. Can you? but of course you can.”
“Yes, I can,” replied Joey.
“Well, little Peter was holding on by the painter against a hard sea, but his strength was not equal to it, and so when a swell took the boat he was pulled right overboard, and he was drowned.”