s old, just
paint an' punk, and she did surely groan to the thrust of the pack. I
was too scared to sleep, so I went up on deck.

I'd allus watched for a chance to run away, and thar was Jim, the
anchor-watch, squatting on the bitts dead asleep. He used to be that
way when nobody chased him.

I daresn't make for the coast. You see I'd heard tell of niggers ashore
which eat boys who run away. But I seen the lights of the three-masted
schooner a couple of miles to windward. I grabbed a sealing gaff and
slid down on to the ice.

First, as the pans rocked under me, I was scary, next I warmed up,
gettin' venturesome, until I came near sliding into the wet, and after
that I'd look before I lep'. There'd been a tops'l breeze from the
norrard, blowin' up since nightfall to a hurricane, and then it blew
some more, until I couldn't pole-jump for fear of being blowed away.
With any other ship, I'd have wished myself back on board.

You know how the grinding piles an edge around each pan, of broken
splinters? That edge shone white agin the black of the water, all the
guide I had. But times the squalls of wind was like scythes edged with
sleet, so I was blinded, waiting, freezing until a lull came, and I'd
get on. It was broad day, and I reckon each step weighed a ton before I
made that schooner.

A gray man, fat, with a chin whisker, lifted me in overside. "Come far?"
says he, and I turned round to show him the _Zedekiah_. She wasn't
there. She was gone--foundered.

So that's how I came aboard of the _Happy Ship_, just like a lil' lost
dog, with no room in my skin for more'n bones and famine. Captain Smith
used to say he'd signed me on as family ghost; but he paid me honest
wages, fed me honest grub, while as to clothes and bed, I was snug as a
little rabbit. He taught me reading and writing, and punctuation with
his belt, sums, hand, reef, and steer, catechism, knots and splices,
sewing, squeegee, rule of the road, soojie moojie, psalms of David,
constitution of the United States, and playing the trombone, with three
pills and a good licking regular Saturday nights. Mother's little boy
began to set up and take notice.

Then five years in the _Pawtucket_ all along, from Montreal to Colon,
from banjos plunking in them _portales_ of Vera Cruz, to bugles crying
revally in Quebec, and the oyster boats asleep by old Point Comfort, and
the Gloucester fleet a-storming home past Sable, and dagos basking on
Havana quays. Suck orang