he duds fit you."

But, as might have been expected, everything was "miles too big," and
bagged about him in such a way as to make one of the men remark, with a
grin, that "if he carried so much loose canvas, he'd founder in the
first squall."

"We must take in a reef or two, then, that's all," said Herrick. "Bear a
hand, my boy, and we'll soon turn you out ship-shape."

[Illustration: FRANK AND OLD HERRICK.]

To work went the two amateur tailors, while Frank seized the chance of
taking a good look at his new friend. The old tar was certainly well
worth looking at. Tall, broad-shouldered, active, with his brown hard
face framed in iron-gray hair and beard--a pleasant twinkle in the keen
blue eyes that looked out from beneath his bushy brows, and a kindly
smile flickering over his rugged features ever and anon, like sunshine
upon a bare moor--he looked the very model of one of those sturdy old
sea-dogs who held their own against England's stoutest "hearts of oak"
in the old days of '76.

As he worked on, making stitches which, though they would have horrified
a fashionable tailor, were at least strong and durable, he began to pour
forth a series of yarns, a tithe of which would "set up" any novelist
for life. Fights with West-Indian pirates; hair-breadth escapes from
polar icebergs; picturesque cruises among the Spice Islands; weary days
and nights in a calm off the African coast, on short allowance of water,
with the burning sun melting the very pitch out of the seams--were
"reeled off" in unbroken succession, while Frank listened open-mouthed,
and more than once forgot his tailoring altogether.

But the stroke of a bell overhead broke in upon the talk.

"My watch on deck," said the old man, springing up as nimbly as a boy.
"Now, lad, slip on them togs agin. Ay, _now_ you look all a-taunto."

Frank was indeed improved. His shore clothes, which, with grease,
coal-dust, tar, salt-water, and the rents made by the fight with Monkey,
were (as the boatswain said) "not fit for a 'spectable scarecrow to wear
of a Sunday," were exchanged for a blue flannel shirt and a pair of trim
white canvas trousers. A neat black silk handkerchief was knotted around
his neck, and his battered "stiff-rim" replaced by a jaunty sailor cap.

"Hello, youngster! the cap'n wants yer," shouted a sailor, as Frank
appeared on deck.

"You're in luck, my boy," said Herrick. "Keep a stiff upper lip, but
don't speak unless you're spoken to, and