Bill. Leastways, that's what they
called me afore: but I got promotion, and in consekence I'm called
the Old Man of the Sea."

"And how did you know I was Martin?"

"How did I know as you was Martin? Why, bless your innocent heart, I
knowed it all along of course. How d'ye think I wouldn't know that?
Why, I no sooner saw you there among them rocks than I says to myself,
'Hullo,' says I, bless my eyes if that ain't Martin looking at my
cows, as I calls 'em. Of course I knowed as you was Martin."

"And what made you go and live in the sea, Old--Bill?" questioned
Martin, "and why did you grow so big?"

[Illustration: ]

"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the giant, blowing a great cloud of spray from
his lips. "I don't mind telling you that. You see, Martin, I ain't
pressed for time. Them blessed bells is nothing to me now, not being
in the foc'sle trying to git a bit of a snooze. Well, to begin, I
were born longer ago than I can tell in a old town by the sea, and
my father he were a sailor man, and was drowned when I were very
small; then my mother she died just becoz every man that belonged to
her was drowned. For those as lives by the sea, Martin, mostly dies
in the sea. Being a orphan I were brought up by Granny. I were very
small then, and used to go and play all day in the marshes, and I
loved the cows and water-rats and all the little beasties, same as
you, Martin. When I were a bit growed Granny says to me one day,
'Bill, you go to sea and be a sailor-boy,' she says, 'becoz I've had
a dream,' she says, 'and it's wrote that you'll never git drowned.'
For you see, Martin, my Granny were a wise woman. So to the sea I
goes, and boy and man, I was on a many voyages to Turkey and Injy
and the Cape and the West Coast and Ameriky, and all round the world
forty times over. Many and many's the time I was shipwrecked and
overboard, but I never got drowned. At last, when I were gitting a
old man, and not much use by reason of the rheumatiz and stiffness
in the jints, there was a mutiny in our ship when we was off the Cape;
and the captain and mate they was killed. Then comes my turn, becoz
I went again the men, d'ye see, and they wasn't a-going for to
pardon me that. So out they had me on deck and began to talk about
how they'd finish me--rope, knife, or bullet. 'Mates,' says I 'shoot
me if you like and I'll dies comforbly; or run a knife into me,
which is better still; or string me up to the yard-arm, which is the
most comforble th