I spent some days now, doing odd jobs for cooks and pantrymen for my board and lodging, while their vessels were in port; but my clothes were so worn and soiled by this and previous service that I could get no chance to work for wages as cabin-boy. Because of my clothes, also, no steamer would allow me to go out of port with her; for I was told that there was a law, then existing in most of the lake cities, by which a boat was made responsible for the support of all vagrants she carried into a town.
I do not know whether this was the case; I know merely that I was invariably sent ashore on the departure of any craft for which I had been washing dishes or scouring knives. It was indeed a precarious existence that I led in this way, but one to which I could see no immediate end. I think it was twice I went with but two meals in forty-eight hours, getting nothing from breakfast to breakfast.
And, I may say here, I have always attributed great advantage to the fact that—after the short and disastrous companionship with my young friend of Irish descent, mentioned some pages back—I was my own fidus Achates in all these worst distresses.
Two boys will, certainly, do more mischief together than half a dozen will do separately; three boys together will do more than eighteen separately,—and so on. In short, I fancy it may be laid down as a general principle, that, under the conditions just enunciated, there is an increasing geometrical ratio between the number of boys and the amount of evil they will do.
I have alluded before to an account of these experiences which I gave to my school-fellows months afterward. The degree of fertile suggestion which even the narrative stirred up in my auditory should have made me thankful then, as I am certainly now, that I did thus lead my vagabond life alone. These ardent youngsters would interpolate, in the very thickest and thrillingest movements of my story, advice as to what I should have done, or hints as to what they would have done, under the circumstances.
During this narration to my school-fellows—and now I am coming to the purpose of the present digression—a boy with a very sinister-looking face, who has since happily died of the small-pox, asked me why I didn’t steal, averring, with great frankness, that was what he would have done.
Now that was the very first time the idea of stealing ever crossed my mind, in connection with my boyish calamities and deprivations. I am sure of this, for I remember the startling impression made upon me at the moment of the boy’s suggestion. I dare not say that I would not have stolen, after some of my long fasts,—if I had ever once thought of it. And I am only too glad that this anomaly should have occurred in my case, for, of a truth, it strikes me as much greater as a metaphysical phenomenon than as a juvenile virtue.[A]
[A] “Multum interest, utrum peccare aliquis nolit, aut nesciat.” This bit of Seneca seems so appropriate, that I hope the reader will excuse me for quoting it here, even if I did get it at second-hand from Montaigne.
In the very midst of my direst misfortunes, when it seemed that nothing worse could possibly happen to me, the Pacific came steaming back to Detroit. She arrived in the afternoon, and, although I had had nothing to eat that day, I was in too great apprehension of her captain to think of anything but concealment, or escape from the city.
After nightfall I stole on board the Michigan Central steamer May Flower, and found the fourth porter. I had been among menials so long that I knew all about the ramifications of their grades, and what particular line of duties belonged to individuals of each grade. The fourth porter, I was well aware, had charge of the forecastle, where the deck-hands and firemen ate and slept.