“I ain’t much when it’s a question of science or foreign languages, but I’m way up as high as a skysail truck when it comes down to the course o’ nature. So I told him I guessed it was a family affair, and that I wouldn’t be missed much if I left the valley.
“He grinned some, and told me I was a suspicious old duffer, and I smashed a bottle of castor-oil over his figgerhead, and started for ’Frisco.
“You see, I had a bit o’ stuff left out of that deal on the Clipperton Reef, where we dived for gold in a couple of fathoms of water as it lay in the bilge of the Isabella. I reckoned to live easy enough without standing watch. I wouldn’t trust to them banks, so I had the stuff in bills stitched in a belt around my waist. When I got to town, a man came up to me with a rush and grabbed me by the hand, and he was no other than that rascal mate of Hollender’s what got two years for an incident on a voyage to Havre.
“I wasn’t glad to see the fellow, as I always had a liking for clean company. But I was feeling lonesome. He just fell down and rolled over with laughing, saying: ‘Oh, it can’t be true, it can’t be true. Oh, no, no, no; it can’t possibly be true. It ain’t so. There ain’t no such luck.’ And he laughed so hard that the tears rolled down out of his little, fishy eyes. All the time swearing that, of all men, he was most pleased to meet his old shipmate Garnett.
We went about town and took a few drinks together, and he kept on laughing and telling me how glad he was to meet me again. I paid for the drinks, and I guess I drank some.
“The next morning when I woke up, I didn’t have a thing left in the world but the shirt I slept in. The scoundrel would have taken that, too, if it hadn’t fitted me so tight. He even took my old shoes.
“There I was, half-naked, a-roarin’ an’ bellowin’ for further orders, till they clapped me into the calaboose for a crazy, half-drunken old sailor. They gave me some togs after I got sober enough to put them on, and, as I had nothing left in the world, I had to sign on, and I soon finds myself in Liverpool.
“But it was all them clothes’ fault I took to this job. Them Samaritans wot lives intirely fer the sake o’ others mostly fumigates all their clothes o’ the clink. Likewise the smell o’ the sulphur sticks in them, an’ somehow I must have smelt like a gorilla, fer as soon as I heaves in sight o’ any one, they puts their fingers to their noses and sheers off. Sink me, Mr. Gore, that was a fine odour I carries about me, an’ if ye object to a bit o’ peppermint salts,—which is good fer the head,—yer ought ter smelt me then.
“I asked a man fer a job buildin’ a house,—not as I ever had a hand at buildin’ afore, but he just sheers off and coughs, an’ calls me a stinkin’ skunk, and I heaves a brick at him. Then I tries a store sellin’ meat, but they sicks the dog on me, and I heaves away again.
“’Twas that way everywhere I goes. Nobody would stand near me an’ listen to my tale. I couldn’t shuck the clothes, and I couldn’t get clear o’ the smell. So I finally starts down alongshore, where the smells is so mixed there’s no tellin’ which stinks the worst.