d the laughing waves we
cleave through so fast!

A few very eventful days, in which Tony's life passed less like reality
than a mere dream, brought them to Leghorn; and the skipper, who had
taken a sort of rough liking to the "Swell," as he still called him,
offered to take him on to Liverpool, if he were willing to enter himself
regularly on the ship's books as one of the crew.

"I am quite ready," said Tony, who thought by the time the brief voyage
was completed he should have picked up enough of the practice and the
look of a sailor to obtain another employment easily.

Accompanied by the skipper, he soon found himself in the consul's
office, crowded with sailors and other maritime folk, busily engaged in
preferring complaints or making excuses, or as eagerly asking for relief
against this or that exaction on the part of the foreign government.

The consul sat smoking his cigar with a friend at a window, little
heeding the turmoil around, but leaving the charge of the various
difficulties to his clerks, who only referred to him on some special
occasions.

"Here's a man, sir," cried one of the clerks, "who wishes to be entered
in the ship's books under an assumed name. I have told him it can't be
done."

"Why does he ask it? Is he a runaway convict?" asked the consul.

"Not exactly," said Tony, laughing; "but as I have not been brought up
before the mast, and I have a few relatives who might not like to hear
of me in that station--"

"A scamp, I take," broke in the consul, "who, having done his worst on
shore, takes to the sea for a refuge?"

"Partly right,--partly wrong," was the dry answer.

"Well, my smart fellow, there 's no help for it. You must give your
name and your birthplace; and if they should prove false ones, take any
consequences that might result."

"What sort of consequences might these be?" asked Tony, calmly; and the
consul, having either spoken without any distinct knowledge attached
to his words, or provoked by the pertinacity of the question, half
irritably answered: "I 've no time to throw away in discussing
casualties; give your name or go your way."

"Yes, yes," murmured the skipper. "Who knows anything about you down
here?--Just sign the sheet and let's be moving."

The sort of good-humored tone and look that went with the words decided
Tony, and he took the pen and wrote "Tony Butler, Ireland."

The consul glanced at the writing, and said, "What part of Ireland? Name
a town