"THEN I GOT OUT MY BIG RED HANDKERCHER AND WAVED IT."
"Yes, sir, upset. You see, there was a kind of a squall, an' we, bein' asleep, didn't get no notice of't till we was in the water. Well, I climbed up on to the bottom o' the boat, an' Dave he hung on to me an' grumbled. 'Nice sort o' doin's,' says Dave; 'there's that sixty-four cents' worth o' good grub gone to feed the fish.' An' then I says to Dave to shut up his all-fired nonsense, and be glad that we wasn't gone along with the grub. Then I got out my big red handkercher an' waved it. There was a small coastin' schooner ratchin' along not more'n a mile away. The squall had died down to a good breeze, an' she was a hustlin'. She didn't see us, though. Well, sir, we hung on to the bottom o' that there boat till putty nigh sundown, an' all the time we was a-driftin' further an' further out to sea. About then this here Dave he woke up an' says, 'Here comes a big wessel right at us.' Sure enough, there was a full-rigged ship what had just cast off her tug an' was a-makin' sail. She was a-headin' so's to come within a hundred yards of us. So I got the handkercher out again an' waved it, and when she got putty near we both yelled. The ship hove to an' lowered a boat, an' in a few minutes we was aboard o' her. We told the skipper our story an' he laffed. He wasn't putty when he laffed, either, because his teeth was all out in front an' his nose was broke. 'So you was bound to New York, was you?' says he. 'Well, now you're bound to London.' I didn't want to go to London, but this here Dave—he don't know much, sir—he said he'd jest as leave go to London on a ship as the West Injies on a schooner. So to make the story short, sir, we two lunatics—'cause that's ezackly what we was—shipped on to that there wessel as green hands."
Hiram paused a moment, overcome by the flood of his melancholy recollections.
"I hope, sir," he continued, gravely, "that you was never a green hand on a ship. A green hand don't know how to do nothin', an' one o' the mates tells him to do it, an' then yells, 'I'll l'arn ye, ye slob!' An' he allus teaches him with his fist or his foot or a belayin'-pin. I bin punched, kicked, an' knocked down all the way from off Long Beach to the North Foreland. I was taught to furl a royal off Davis South Shoal with a kick in the ribs. I had a long splice, a short splice, an eye splice, an' a black eye punched into me off George's Bank. I got the science o' heavin' to in a gale o' wind kicked clean through me off Cape Race. I learned how to heave the log off Sable Island by bein' hove down the forehatch head fust,'cause I didn't know how to do 't. I got a fust-class chart o' the North Atlantic Ocean hammered on to my body in black an' blue, an' ef ever I git lost out there again, it'll be because the Jersey coast has lost its anchor an' gone adrift. An' now, sir, here's Dave an' me; we don't want to go South on to a schooner no more. All we wants to do is to git back to Joppa, let our fathers lick us, an' then settle down to cod-fishin' an' peace an' quiet for the rest of our lives."
Mr. Whittingham laughed heartily over this account of the two boys, but said their final decision was a very wise one, and that he thought they had paid in full all they owed for having run away from home. He sent them home in the steerage of a swift ocean liner that landed them in Joppa a week later.
THE SCIENTIST AND THE FARMER.
A distinguished scientific writer was once on a shooting excursion in an English shire. Coming across a bluff, hale farmer, he entered into conversation with him. As they walked along, they reached a heap of stones. Pointing to them, the scientific man asked the farmer if he knew how they were made. The farmer grinned and replied, "Why, they bean't made, sir; they grows."
"Grow? Why, nonsense, man! What do you mean by grow?"