, and lead
him with the half familiarity of powerful protection to a bench beneath
the refectory window. Taking out his watch again, he put it in the
passive hands of the astonished priest, saying, "Time me," cleared his
throat, and began:--

"Fourteen years ago there was a ship cruisin' in the Pacific, jest off
this range, that was ez nigh on to a Hell afloat as anything rigged kin
be. If a chap managed to dodge the cap'en's belayin-pin for a time,
he was bound to be fetched up in the ribs at last by the mate's boots.
There was a chap knocked down the fore hatch with a broken leg in the
Gulf, and another jumped overboard off Cape Corrientes, crazy as a loon,
along a clip of the head from the cap'en's trumpet. Them's facts. The
ship was a brigantine, trading along the Mexican coast. The cap'en
had his wife aboard, a little timid Mexican woman he'd picked up at
Mazatlan. I reckon she didn't get on with him any better than the men,
for she ups and dies one day, leavin' her baby, a year-old gal. One of
the crew was fond o' that baby. He used to get the black nurse to put it
in the dingy, and he'd tow it astern, rocking it with the painter like
a cradle. He did it--hatin' the cap'en all the same. One day the black
nurse got out of the dingy for a moment, when the baby was asleep,
leavin' him alone with it. An idea took hold on him, jest from
cussedness, you'd say, but it was partly from revenge on the cap'en and
partly to get away from the ship. The ship was well inshore, and the
current settin' towards it. He slipped the painter--that man--and set
himself adrift with the baby. It was a crazy act, you'd reckon, for
there wasn't any oars in the boat; but he had a crazy man's luck, and
he contrived, by sculling the boat with one of the seats he tore out, to
keep her out of the breakers, till he could find a bight in the shore
to run her in. The alarm was given from the ship, but the fog shut down
upon him; he could hear the other boats in pursuit. They seemed to close
in on him, and by the sound he judged the cap'en was just abreast of
him in the gig, bearing down upon him in the fog. He slipped out of the
dingy into the water without a splash, and struck out for the breakers.
He got ashore after havin' been knocked down and dragged in four times
by the undertow. He had only one idea then, thankfulness that he had not
taken the baby with him in the surf. You kin put that down for him: it's
a fact. He got off into the hills, a