about fifteen, who had been shipped by Caudel
to serve as steward or cabin boy and to make himself generally useful
besides. As he approached, I eyed him with some misgiving, though I
had found nothing to object to in him before; but the presence of my
sweetheart in the cabin had, I suppose, tempered my taste to a quality
of lover-like fastidiousness, and this boy, Bobby, to my mind, looked
very dirty.

"Do you mean to wait upon me in those clothes?" said I.

"They're the best I have, master," he answered, staring at me with a
pair of round eyes out of a dingy skin, that was certainly not
clarified by the number of freckles and pimples which decorated it.

"You can look smarter than that if you like," said I to him. "I want
breakfast right away off. And let Foster drop his bucket and go to
work to boil and cook. But tell Captain Caudel also that before you
lay aft you must clean yourself, polish your face, brush your hair and
shoes, and if you haven't got a clean shirt you must borrow one."

The boy went forward.

"Pity," said I, thinking aloud rather than talking, as I stepped to the
binnacle to mark the yacht's course, "that Caudel should have shipped
such a dingy-skinned chap as that fellow for cabin use."

"It's all along of his own doing, sir," said Job Crew.

"How? You mean he won't wash himself?"

"No, sir; it's along of smoking."

"Smoking?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, sir. I know his father--he's a waterman. His father told me
that that there boy Bobby saved up, and then laid out all he'd got upon
a meerschaum pipe _for_ to colour it. He kep' all on a smoking, day
arter day, and night arter night. But his father says to me, it was no
go, sir; 'stead of his colouring the pipe, the pipe coloured him, and
is weins have run nothen but tobacco juice ever since."

I burst into a laugh, and went to the rail to take a look round. We
might have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so boundless did
the spreading waters look; not a blob or film of coast on any hand of
us broke the flawless sweep of the green circle of Channel waters.
There was a steady breeze off the port beam, and the yacht, with every
cloth which she carried on her, was driving through it as though she
were in tow of a steamboat. The scene was full of life. On one bow
was an English smack, as gaudy in the misty brilliance of the sunshine
as an acquatic parrot, with her red mainsail and brown mizzen, and
white foresail topping, asl