“As I was saying, when I married and settled down amongst the hills to the east’ard o’ the Sacramento, I thought I’d about served my time on deep water and had come on the beach for good. You see, I married old man White’s daughter—he was a brother to Skipper White, what sailed that race with old man Gore around the Cape—and, as the gal was young and had helped keep house for the old man, I reckoned we’d get along first-rate. But there was bad blood in that White family. The old man had run a boarding-house down by the St. Joe Mission, and he was a bad man. His wife’s brother, Skipper Anderson, had done some queer things, and had got a hard name on the West Coast long ago, when I was with him. So, you see, there was bad blood in the family.{131}

“After I had married and bought a little farm, I just settled down, peaceful like, and waited for the family to increase and multiply. You can bet I was some astonished one day, about two months afterward, when I found the family had increased and multiplied all of a sudden like.

“So I went to the fellow what sold me this vial—which cures most things in the head—and he told me there was no accounting for the strange and curious things what happen along in the course o’ nature. At first, though, he began on science, and told me there was no explanation unless I could follow him through a lot o’ stuff what was writ in a book in a foreign language. He had just about convinced me that all was right when he began on the course o’ nature.

“I ain’t much when it’s a question of science or foreign languages, but I’m way up as high as a skysail truck when it comes down to the course o’ nature. So I told him I guessed it was a family affair, and that I wouldn’t be missed much if I left the valley.{132}

“He grinned some, and told me I was a suspicious old duffer, and I smashed a bottle of castor-oil over his figgerhead, and started for ’Frisco.

“You see, I had a bit o’ stuff left out of that deal on the Clipperton Reef, where we dived for gold in a couple of fathoms of water as it lay in the bilge of the Isabella. I reckoned to live easy enough without standing watch. I wouldn’t trust to them banks, so I had the stuff in bills stitched in a belt around my waist. When I got to town, a man came up to me with a rush and grabbed me by the hand, and he was no other than that rascal mate of Hollender’s what got two years for an incident on a voyage to Havre.

“I wasn’t glad to see the fellow, as I always had a liking for clean company. But I was feeling lonesome. He just fell down and rolled over with laughing, saying: ‘Oh, it can’t be true, it can’t be true. Oh, no, no, no; it can’t possibly be true. It ain’t so. There ain’t no such luck.’ And he laughed so hard that the tears rolled down out of his{133} little, fishy eyes. All the time swearing that, of all men, he was most pleased to meet his old shipmate Garnett.

We went about town and took a few drinks together, and he kept on laughing and telling me how glad he was to meet me again. I paid for the drinks, and I guess I drank some.

“The next morning when I woke up, I didn’t have a thing left in the world but the shirt I slept in. The scoundrel would have taken that, too, if it hadn’t fitted me so tight. He even took my old shoes.

“There I was, half-naked, a-roarin’ an’ bellowin’ for further orders, till they clapped me into the calaboose for a crazy, half-drunken old sailor. They gave me some togs after I got sober enough to put them on, and, as I had nothing left in the world, I had to sign on, and I soon finds myself in Liverpool.

“But it was all them clothes’ fault I took to this job. Them Samaritans wot lives intirely fer the sake o’ others mostly fumigates all their clothes o’ the clink. Likewise{134} the smell o’ the sulphur sticks in them, an’ somehow I must have smelt like a gorilla, fer as soon as I heaves in sight o’ any one, they puts their fingers to their noses and sheers off. Sink me, Mr. Gore, that was a fine odour I carries about me, an’ if ye object to a bit o’ peppermint salts,—which is good fer the head,—yer ought ter smelt me then.

“I asked a man fer a job buildin’ a house,—not as I ever had a hand at buildin’ afore, but he just sheers off and coughs, an’ calls me a stinkin’ skunk, and I heaves a brick at him. Then I tries a store sellin’ meat, but they sicks the dog on me, and I heaves away again.

“’Twas that way everywhere I goes. Nobody would stand near me an’ listen to my tale. I couldn’t shuck the clothes, and I couldn’t get clear o’ the smell. So I finally starts down alongshore, where the smells is so mixed there’s no tellin’ which stinks the worst.

“Here I runs across this Webster, who is cousin to old man Jackson at the Falklands,{135} and who is the most uncommon damn fool, as he says himself.”

“’Pon me whurd, he’s got the proper man for a mate to back him, thin,” observed O’Toole.

“I do know something about handling canvas,” answered Garnett, taking the remark for a compliment; “but may I eternally stew if I don’t speak the truth when I says it takes a m-a-n to handle those gangs about decks.”

“What air ye pratin’ about, man? Do ye mane yer own watch?”

“Now, stave me endwise if you ain’t the same red-headed idiot you always was,” growled Garnett. “Calling a watch a gang! Lord love ye, man, there are one hundred an............