you can't always tell.
Sometimes the richest things are found in onlikely places. But I kind
of hate to part with these old boxes. Almost every one of 'em has
something about it that reminds me of old times.

"You know I ain't much of a reading man," Grimshaw went on, "an' these
boxes make the only library I have. I come up here an' moon around
sometimes when I git sick of living ashore, an' these old chests seem
to talk to me. They smell of the sea an' tell of the sea, an' each one
of 'em has some history connected with it."

Drew scented a story, and as Tyke's tales, while sometimes garrulous,
were always interesting, he forebore to interrupt and disposed himself
to listen.

"Now take that box over there, for instance," continued Tyke, pointing
to a stained and mildewed chest which bore all the marks of great age
and rough handling. "That belonged to Manuel Gomez, dead ten year
since. He went down in the _Nancy Boardman_ when she was rounding the
Cape. Big, dark, upstanding man he was, an' one of the best bo'suns
that ever piped a watch to quarters in a living gale.

"An' he was as good a fighting man as he was sailor. Nobody I'd rather
have at my side in a scrap. He was right up in front with me when
those Malay pirates boarded us off the Borneo coast. Those brown
devils came over the side like a tidal wave, an' no matter how many we
downed, they still kep' coming on.

"It was nip an' tuck for a while, but we were fighting for our lives,
an' we beat 'em off at last an' sent what was left of 'em tumbling into
their praus. As it was, they sliced off two of my fingers, an' one
fellow would have buried that crooked kriss of his in my neck if Manuel
hadn't cut him down jest in time.

"Of course, I was grateful to him for saving my life, an' he sailed
with me for several voyages after that. That scrap with the pirates
never seemed to do him an awful lot of good. He had pirates on the
brain anyway. You see, he come from Trinidad on the Spanish Main,
where the old pirates used to do their plundering an' butchering, an' I
s'pose he'd heard talk about their doings ever since he was a boy.

"He used to talk about 'em whenever he got a chance. Of course,
discipline being what it is on board ship, he couldn't talk as free
with me as I s'pose he did with his mates. But once in a while he'd
reel off a yarn, an' then he'd hint kind of mysterious like that he
knew where some of the old Pirates' doubloons were