be just full of
stories of adventure and wonderful happenings by sea and land. Uncle
Abram said you had been everywhere."

Cap'n Amazon seemed to take a long breath, then cleared his throat, and
said:

"I've been pretty nigh everywhere. Seen some funny corners of the
world, too, Louise."

"You must tell me about your adventures," she said. "Your brother told
me that you ran away to sea when you were only twelve years old and
sailed on a long whaling voyage."

"Yep. _South Sea Belle_. Some old hooker, she was," said Cap'n Amazon
briskly. "We was out three year and come home with our hold bustin'
with ile, plenty of baleen, some sperm, and a lump of ambergris as big
as a nail keg--or pretty nigh."

Right then and there he launched into relating how the wondrous find of
ambergris came to be made, neglecting his breakfast to do so. He told
it so vividly that Louise was enthralled. The picture of the whaling
bark beating up to the dead and festering leviathan lying on the
surface of the ocean to which the exploding gases of decomposition had
brought the hulk, lived in her mind for days. The mate of the _South
Sea Belle_, believing the creature had died of the disease supposedly
caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted
upon boarding the carcass. Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea
fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the
whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth
so great a sum to the perfumer.

"'Twas a big haul--one o' the biggest lumps o' ambergris ever brought
into the port of New Bedford," concluded Cap'n Amazon. "Helped make
the owners rich, and the Old Man, too. Course, I got my sheer; but a
boy's sheer on a whaler them days wouldn't buy him no house and lot.
So I went to sea again."

"You must have been at sea almost all your life, Cap'n Amazon."

"Pretty nigh. I ain't never lazed around on shore when there was a
berth in a seaworthy craft to be had for the askin'. I let Abe do
that," he added, in what Louise thought was a rather scornful tone.

"Why, I don't believe Uncle Abram has a lazy bone in his body! See the
nice business he has built up here. And he told me he owned shares in
several vessels and other property."

"That's true," Cap'n Amazon agreed promptly. "And a tidy sum in the
Paulmouth National Bank. I got a letter to the bank folks he left to
introduce me, if I needed cash. Yes, Abe