Now, I hadn’t thought before this just how disreputable I looked. I was dressed in the slops I had got out of the Scarboro’s chest, was barefooted, and was burned almost as black as any negro—where the skin showed, at least. I couldn’t much blame this whippersnapper of a consul’s clerk for thinking me a tough subject.
“None of those things fit my case, Mister,” I said, mildly. “I know I don’t look handsome, but I’ve been on a whaling bark for several months and I haven’t had time yet to tog up.”
“A whaleship?” he asked. “An American whaleship?”
“Yes, sir,” said I.
“There is none in port.”
“No, sir. I have been with the Scarboro. I’m mighty sure she’s not in port.”
“The Scarboro?” he asked me with a sudden queer look coming into his face. “You’re one of the crew of the Scarboro?”
“Not exactly one of her crew. But she picked me up adrift and I have been with her until lately.”
“You come in here,” said the clerk, slowly, motioning me into the room behind him. And when we were in there he motioned me to a seat and sat down himself in front of me. “Let’s hear your yarn,” he said.
I thought it was rather strange he should be so interested, and likewise that he should stare at me so all the time I was talking. But I gave him a pretty good account of my adventures from the time I was blown out of Bolderhead Harbor, finishing with how I came to be at Buenos Ayres without the bark herself being within six or seven hundred miles of the port.