ook changed the subject from
women to history. In senile fashion, to show off, he recited the names
of the Roman emperors, in chronological sequence. And, drawing a curtain
aside from a shelf he himself had built over his bunk, he showed me
Momsen's complete history of Rome, in a row of formidable volumes.

* * * * *

"There's the captain now!"

A great hulk of a man was lounging over the rail of the poop-deck,
looking down over the dock.

I started aft.

"Hist!" the cook motioned me back mysteriously. "Be sure you say 'Sir'
to him frequently."

* * * * *

"Beg pardon, sir. But are you Captain Schantze, sir?" (the cook had told
me the captain's name).

"Yes. What do you want?"

"I've heard you needed a cabin boy."

"Are you of German descent?"

"No, sir."

"What nationality are you, then?"

"American, sir."

"That means nothing, what were your people?"

"Straight English on my mother's side ... Pennsylvania Dutch on my
father's."

"What a mixture!"

He began walking up and down in seaman fashion. After spending several
minutes in silence I ventured to speak to him again.

"Do you think you could use me, sir?"

He swung on me abruptly.

"In what capacity?"

"As anything ... I'm willing to go as able seaman before the mast, if
necessary."

He stopped and looked me over and laughed explosively.

"Able seaman! you're so thin you have to stand twice in one place to
make a shadow ... you've got the romantic boy's idea of the sea ...
but, are you willing to do hard work from four o'clock in the morning
till nine or ten at night?"

"Anything, to get to sea, sir!"

"--sure you haven't run away from home?"

"No-no, sir!"

"Then why in the devil do you want to go to sea? isn't the land good
enough?"

I took a chance and told the captain all about my romantic notions of
sea-life, travel, and adventure.

"You talk just like one of our German poets."

"I _am_ a poet," I ventured further.

The captain gave an amused whistle. But I could see that he liked me.

"To-morrow morning at four o'clock ... come back, then, and Karl, the
cabin boy, will start you in at his job. I'll promote him to boy before
the mast."

* * * * *

I spent the night at Uncle Jim's house ... he was the uncle that had
come east, years before. He was married ... a head-bookkeeper ... lived
in a flat in the Bronx.

He thoug