f rum, and
some pipes and baccy with me. This I did as soon as the duties of the
ship would allow me. Well, I soon became great friends with the king
and queen, and I used to go up to the palace every day and sit and smoke
a pipe with his majesty in a cosy way, and frequently the queen would
come and take a whiff out of my pipe, till she learnt to smoke too, and
I then taught her to chaw baccy. She was very fond of a quid, let me
tell ye, and we became as friendly as two mice. All the time little
Chickchick used to sit up in a corner by herself, making a mat or a
straw hat, or some such sort of thing, looking up at me with her
beautiful eyes, and listening to all I was saying, though, for the
matter of that, she could not understand much of my lingo. At last I
caught the dear little thing at it, and I thought she would like to
learn to smoke also, so I taught her, and I was not long in finding out
that she had fallen desperately in love with me. Of course, I could not
do less than return the compliment, and told her so, which pleased her
mightily. In fact, the king and queen and I, with the princess, had a
pleasant life of it, with nothing to do and plenty to eat and drink.

"`Now,' said the king one day to me, as we were sitting over our pipes
and grog, `you won't go away in big ship--you no go--you stay marry
Chickchick--be my son--moch better. Enemy come, you fight; friend come,
you talk.'

"By this I concluded he wanted me to become his prime minister--a sort
of first-lieutenant kings have to do all the work for them.

"`I'll think the matter over, your majesty,' I answered, `and if I can
manage it, I'll stay.'

"This answer seemed to please him mightily, and little Chickchick came
up laughing and singing to me soon afterwards, and told me she was so
glad of that; she should like to be my wife above all things. It was a
little bit of unsophisticated nature which pleased me amazingly. I then
arranged with the captain to remain there while he went cruising among
the other islands, and he was then to come back and take me to the South
Polar Sea, where we were bound on a whaling cruise. The ship sailed
away, and so did my pet shark, who I afterwards heard pined and grew
thin, and wouldn't even take his food when he found I was not on board.
It was a mark of affection which touched me sensibly.

"I thus became, by my own intrinsic merits, a prime minister and
son-in-law to a king. I had not an unpleasant