“How long did you remain in the Alms-House, and at what age did you first go to sea?”
“I staid among them the public feeds, until I was eight years old, and then I took a hazy day to cut adrift from charity. At that time, Miles, our country belonged to the British—or they treated it as if it did, though I've heard wiser men than myself say, it was always our own, the king of England only happening to be our king—but I was born a British subject, and being now just forty, you can understand I went to sea several years before the revolution.”
“True—you must have seen service in that war, on one side, or the other?”
“If you say both sides, you'll not be out of the way. In 1775, I was a foretop-man in the Romeny 50, where I remained until I was transferred to the Connecticut 74—”
“The what?” said I, in surprise. “Had the English a line-of-battle ship called the Connecticut?”
“As near as I could make it out: I always thought it a big compliment for John Bull to pay the Yankees.”
“Perhaps the name of your ship was the Carnatic? The sounds are not unlike.”
“Blast me, if I don't think you've hit it, Miles. Well, I'm glad of it, for I run from the ship, and I shouldn't half like the thought of serving a countryman such a trick. Yes, I then got on board of one of our sloops, and tried my hand at settling the account with my old masters. I was taken prisoner for my pains, but worried through the war without getting my neck stretched. They wanted to make it out, on board the old Jarsey, that I was an Englishman, but I told 'em just to prove it. Let 'em only prove where I was born, I said, and I would give it up. I was ready to be hanged, if they could only prove where I was born. D——, but I sometimes thought I never was born, at all.”
“You are surely an American, Marble? A Manhattanese, born and educated?”
“Why, as it is not likely any person would import a child a week old, to plant it on a tombstone, I conclude I am. Yes, I must be that; and I have sometimes thought of laying claim to the property of Trinity Church, on the strength of my birth-right. Well, as soon as the war was over, and I got out of prison, and that was shortly after you were born, Captain Wallingford, I went to work regularly, and have been ever since sarving as dickey, or chief-mate, on board of some craft or other. If I had no family bosom to go into, as a resting-place, I had my bosom to fill with solid beef and pork, and that is not to be done by idleness.”