"That isn't far from the truth," answered Bill Marline, "seein' he started so arly on the sea he can't tell when he wasn't there himself."
"How was that matter, Bill?" asked one of his messmates. "They say you have kept the captain's reckoning, man and boy, these fifteen years."
"That have I, and never a truer heart floated than the man you see yonder leaning over the rail on the quarterdeck, where he belongs," answered Bill Marline.
"How did you first fall in with him, Bill?—Tell us that," said one of the crew.
"Well, do ye see, messmates, it must have been the matter of thirteen years ago, there or thereabouts, but I can't exactly say, seeing's I never have kept a log and can't write; but must have been about that length of time, when I was a foremast hand on board the 'Sea Lion,' as fine an Indiaman as you would wish to see. We were lying in the Liverpool docks, with sails bent and cargo stowed, under sailing orders, when one afternoon there strolled alongside a boy rather ragged and dirty, but with such eyes and such a countenance as would make him a passport anywhere. Well, do ye see, we were lazing away time on board, and waiting the captain's coming before we hauled out into the stream, and so we coaxed the lad aboard. He either didn't know where he came from or wouldn't tell, and when we proposed to take him to sea with us, he readily agreed, and sure enough he sailed in the 'Sea Lion.'"
"Well, heave ahead, Bill," said one of the group, as the narrator stopped to stove a fresh instalment of the Virginia weed in his larboard cheek.
"Heave ahead."
"We hadn't got fairly clear of the channel," continued Bill Marline, "before the boy had become a general favorite all over the ship. We washed him up and bent on a new suit of toggery on him, with a reg'lar tarpaulin, and there was almost a fight whether the forecastle or the cabin should have him. At last it was left to the boy himself, and he chose to remain with us in the forecastle. The boy wasn't sick an hour on the passage until after we left the Cape of Good Hope, when the flag halliards getting fouled, he was sent up to the peak to loosen it, and by some lurch of the ship was throw upon deck. Why it didn't kill him was the wonder of all, but the boy was crazy for near a month from the blow on his head, which he got in falling, but he gradually got cured under our captain's care.
"Well, do ye see, our captain was a regular whole-souled fellow, though he did sometimes work up a hand's old iron pretty close for him, and so he took the boy into the cabin and gave him a berth alongside his own, and as he grew better took to teaching him the use of his instruments, and mathematics, and the like. The boy they said was wonderful ready, and learned like a book, and could take the sun and work up the ship's course as well as the captain; but what was the funniest of all was that, after he got well, he didn't know one of us, he had forgotten or even how he came on board the ship, the injury had put such a stopper on his brain that he had forgotten all that ever occurred before it. To my mind, howdsomever, it wasn't much to forget, seeing he was little better than a baby, and hadn't been to sea at all, and you know there aint anything worth knowing on shore, more'n one can overhaul in a day's leave, more or less, within hail of the sea."
"That's true," growled one or two of his messmates.