"No," replied Captain Jennings, "I didn't know it. Who is he?"
"Jack Crosstree, that old fisherman."
"He is a man-of-war's man, too," chimed in the midshipman, "and we're not going to stand by and see him suffer."
"Of course not," said Mr. Harding, with a merry twinkle in his eye, "you are old men-of-war's men yourselves, you know, and you must always be ready to assist a shipmate in distress."
"That's our opinion exactly," said the admiral. "We're going up to the academy now to bring down a good dinner for him."
"Who is Jack Crosstree?" asked Captain Green, when the students had passed out of hearing.
"No one around here knows much about him," replied the grocer. "He is a sea-faring man, and, if one might judge by his appearance, he has seen some hard times. He has been all over the world, spent the best part of his life in the navy, lost his leg during the war, and has settled down here in Newport to pass the remainder of his days as a fisherman, but he doesn't seem to be making a paying business of it. Suppose we go down and talk to him."
Jack Crosstree, as he called himself, had been in Newport about six months, and during that time he had shunned every body except the students, who paid frequent visits to his cabin to listen to his stories, when he happened to be in the humor to tell them, and to purchase specimens of his handiwork in the shape of models of yawls, jolly-boats, and full-rigged ships. He was a sullen and morose old fellow, too lazy to work, and had a great deal to say about the cruelty and injustice of the world.
A few minutes walk brought the three friends to a dilapidated cabin on the beach, whose appearance and surroundings testified, in unmistakable language, to the poverty and shiftlessness of its occupant. A broken, leaky scow, that would have borne no comparison to Bob Jennings's old Go Ahead, was drawn up on the beach, a tattered sail leaned against the eaves, one side of the roof of the cabin was gone, and the door was so nearly off its hinges, that, when Captain Green rapped upon it with his cane, it fell down with a loud crash.
"Avast, there!" growled a hoarse voice, from the inside. "You've done it now, haven't you?"