st of terms already.

"Nice sailor you are!" Charlie laughed, as I sat up rubbing my eyes.
"Falling asleep on watch! Our young friend here is worth ten of you."

I smiled good morning to our young passenger.

"How about the court-martial on his looks you spoke of last night,
Charlie?" I asked.

"Well, he's not pock-marked, at all events, is he?--he told the truth so
far. But I've still a question or two to ask him before we leave West
End. We'll have breakfast first--to give him courage."

The lad made a humorous face to suggest his fear of the ordeal; as he
did so, I took a good look at him. Charlie might easily have said a
little more about his looks, had it been in his line, for, so far from
being only "not pock-marked," he was something more like a young Apollo:
some six feet in height, upstanding like the statue of a Greek athlete;
a rich olive skin, through which the pink of youth came and went; and
splendid blue-green eyes, fearless, and yet shy as a lad's eyes often
are--at that moment of development when a good-looking lad, in spite of
his height and muscles, has something of the bloom and purity of a girl,
without in the least suggesting effeminacy. So, many tall athletic
girls, for a brief period, suggest boys--without there being the least
danger of mistake as to their real sex.

He was evidently very young--scarcely more than eighteen--and had a
great tendency to blush, for all his attempt at nonchalant grown-up
airs. He was the very embodiment of youth, in its sun-tipped morning
flower. What Charlie could have to "question" this artless young
being--as incapable of plotting, it seemed to me, as a young
faun--passed my conjecture; but, as Charlie had given me a quiet wink,
as he spoke of the after-breakfast examination, I suspected that it was
one of those jokes of his which are apt to have something of the
simplicity and roughness of seafaring tradition.

Meanwhile, old Tom had been busy with breakfast, and soon the smells of
coffee and freshly made "johnny-cake" and frying bacon competed not
unsuccessfully with the various fragrances of the morning. Is there
anything to match for zest a breakfast like that of ours at dawn on the
open sea?

Breakfast over, Charlie filled his pipe, assuming, as he did so, a
judicial aspect. I filled mine, and our young friend followed suit by
taking a silver cigarette-case from his pocket, and striking a match on
the leg of his khaki knickerbockers with a professio