d can make your head turn
dizzy when they smile at you. And she's got the right sort of hair to
go with 'em--red and gold and brown all mixed up, until you can't tell
which is which; the sort that makes you wonder if some big artist hasn't
been painting a picture for you, when you see it out in the sunshine.

She comes of a titled family, but she'd want to die to-morrow if Thomas
Jefferson Brown didn't worship her from the tips of her little toes to
the top of her pretty head. She thinks he's a king. And he is--one of
those great, big, healthy kings that nature sometimes grows when it has
half a chance.

II

It's curious how the whole thing happened. Thomas Jefferson wandered up
to Portland at the time we were fitting out a ship for a whaling cruise.
We saw him imitating a banjo for a lot of kids down on the wharf, and
the minute our eyes lit on him--Tucker's and mine--we liked him. It
isn't necessary to go into the details of what happened after that. Just
a week later, when Thomas Jefferson and I were shaking hands for the
last time, a queer sort of look came into his eyes, and he said:

"Bobby, you're the first man I ever knew that makes me feel like crying
when you leave me."

He said it just like one of the kids he'd tickled half to death on the
wharf. There was a little jerking in his throat, and there came into his
face a look so gentle that it made me think of a girl.

"Why don't you come along on this cruise with me?" I said.

Thomas Jefferson gave a sudden start, and a queer expression came into
his eyes, as if he saw something out on the sea that had startled him.
Then he laughed. You could hear that laugh of Thomas Jefferson's three
blocks away, and sunshine in winter couldn't bring more cheer than the
sound of it. He looked at me for a moment, and then said:

"Bobby, I'll go!"

It wasn't forty-eight hours before Thomas Jefferson had a first mortgage
on every soul aboard the "Sleeping Sealer," from the cap'n to the oiler
down in the engine-room. He was able, all right, but you couldn't have
made an able seaman out of him in a hundred years. For all that, he did
the work of three men. The first thing you heard when you woke up in the
morning was his whistle, and the last thing you heard at night was his
laugh or his song. He did everything, from cooking to telling us why
Germany couldn't lick England, and how the United States could clean up
the map of the earth if Congress would spend less mo