ud_ nine years before that, and this is
1913--why, that was sixty-two years ago," I charged.

"And I was seven years old," he chuckled. "My mother was stewardess on
the _Flyin' Cloud_. I was born at sea. I was boy when I was twelve, on
the _Herald o' the Morn_, when she made around in ninety-nine days--half
the crew in irons most o' the time, five men lost from aloft off the
Horn, the points of our sheath-knives broken square off, knuckle-dusters
an' belayin'-pins flyin', three men shot by the officers in one day, the
second mate killed dead an' no one to know who done it, an' drive! drive!
drive! ninety-nine days from land to land, a run of seventeen thousand
miles, an' east to west around Cape Stiff!"

"But that would make you sixty-nine years old," I insisted.

"Which I am," he retorted proudly, "an' a better man at that than the
scrubby younglings of these days. A generation of 'em would die under
the things I've been through. Did you ever hear of the _Sunny
South_?--she that was sold in Havana to run slaves an' changed her name
to _Emanuela_?"

"And you've sailed the Middle Passage!" I cried, recollecting the old
phrase.

"I was on the _Emanuela_ that day in Mozambique Channel when the _Brisk_
caught us with nine hundred slaves between-decks. Only she wouldn't a-
caught us except for her having steam."

I continued to stroll up and down beside this massive relic of the past,
and to listen to his hints and muttered reminiscences of old man-killing
and man-driving days. He was too real to be true, and yet, as I studied
his shoulder-stoop and the age-drag of his huge feet, I was convinced
that his years were as he asserted. He spoke of a Captain Sonurs.

"He was a great captain," he was saying. "An' in the two years I sailed
mate with him there was never a port I didn't jump the ship goin' in an'
stay in hiding until I sneaked aboard when she sailed again."

"But why?"

"The men, on account of the men swearin' blood an' vengeance and warrants
against me because of my ways of teachin' them to be sailors. Why, the
times I was caught, and the fines the skipper paid for me--and yet it was
my work that made the ship make money."

He held up his huge paws, and as I stared at the battered, malformed
knuckles I understood the nature of his work.

"But all that's stopped now," he lamented. "A sailor's a gentleman these
days. You can't raise your voice or your hand to them."

At this moment he was addr