After tea, that same evening, we assembled around the table in the kitchen--the only place where Sailor Ben felt at home--to hear what he had to say for himself.

 

The candles were snuffed, and a pitcher of foaming nut-brown ale was set at the elbow of the speaker, who was evidently embarrassed by the respectability of his audience, consisting of Captain Nutter, Miss Abigail, myself, and Kitty, whose face shone with happiness like one of the polished tin platters on the dresser.

 

"Well, my hearties," commenced Sailor Ben--then he stopped short and turned very red, as it struck him that maybe this was not quite the proper way to address a dignitary like the Captain and a severe elderly lady like Miss Abigail Nutter, who sat bolt upright staring at him as she would have stared at the Tycoon of Japan himself.

 

"I ain't much of a hand at spinnin' a yarn," remarked Sailor Ben, apologetically, "'specially when the yarn is all about a man as has made a fool of hisself, an' 'specially when that man's name is Benjamin Watson."

 

"Bravo!" cried Captain Nutter, rapping on the table encouragingly.

 

"Thankee, sir, thankee. I go back to the time when Kitty an' me was livin' in lodgin's by the dock in New York. We was as happy, sir, as two porpusses, which they toil not neither do they spin. But when I seed the money gittin' low in the locker--Kitty's starboard stockin', savin' your presence, marm--I got down-hearted like, seem' as I should be obleeged to ship agin, for it didn't seem as I could do much ashore. An' then the sea was my nat'ral spear of action. I wasn't exactly born on it, look you, but I fell into it the fust time I was let out arter my birth. My mother slipped her cable for a heavenly port afore I was old enough to hail her; so I larnt to look on the ocean for a sort of step-mother--an' a precious hard one she has been to me.

 

"The idee of leavin' Kitty so soon arter our marriage went agin my grain considerable. I cruised along the docks for somethin' to do in the way of stevedore: an' though I picked up a stray job here and there, I didn't am enough to buy ship-bisket for a rat; let alone feedin' two human mouths. There wasn't nothin' honest I wouldn't have turned a hand to; but the 'longshoremen gobbled up all the work, an' a outsider like me didn't stand a show.

 

"Things got from bad to worse; the month's rent took all our cash except a dollar or so, an' the sky looked kind o' squally fore an' aft. Well, I set out one mornin'--that identical unlucky mornin'--determined to come back an' toss some pay into Kitty's lap, if I had to sell my jacket for it. I spied a brig unloadin' coal at pier No. 47--how well I remembers it! I hailed the mate, an' offered myself for a coal-heaver. But I wasn't wanted, as he told me civilly enough, which was better treatment than usual. As I turned off rather glum I was signalled by one of them sleek, smooth-spoken rascals with a white hat an' a weed on it, as is always goin' about the piers a-seekin' who they may devower.

 

"We sailors know 'em for rascals from stem to starn, but somehow every fresh one fleeces us jest as his mate did afore him. We don't lam nothin' by exper'ence; we're jest no better than a lot of babys with no brains.

 

"'Good mornin', my man,' sez the chap, as iley as you please.

 

"'Mornin', sir,' sez I.

 

"'Lookin' for a job?' sez he.

 

"'Through the big end of a telescope,' sez I--meanin' that the chances for a job looked very small from my pint of view.

 

"'You're the man for my money,' sez the sharper, smilin' as innocent as a cherubim; 'jest step in here, till we talk it over.'

 

"So I goes with him like a nat'ral-born idiot, into a little grocery-shop near by, where we sets down at a table with a bottle atween us. Then it comes out as there is a New Bedford whaler about to start for the fishin' grounds, an' jest one able-bodied sailor like me is wanted to make up the crew. Would I go? Yes, I wouldn't on no terms.

 

"'I'll bet you fifty dollars,' sez he, 'that you'll come back fust mate.'

 

"'I'll bet you a hundred,' sez I, 'that I don't, for I've signed papers as keeps me ashore, an' the parson has witnessed the deed.'

 

"So we sat there, he urgin' me to ship, an' I chaffin' him cheerful over the bottle.

 

"Arter a while I begun to feel a little queer; things got foggy in my upper works, an' I remembers, faint-like, of signin' a paper; then I remembers bein' in a small boat; an' then I remembers nothin' until I heard the mate's whistle pipin' all hands on deck. I tumbled up with the rest; an' there I was--on board of a whaler outward bound for a three years' cruise, an' my dear little lass ashore awaitin' for me."

 

"Miserable wretch!" said Miss Abigail, in a voice that vibrated among the tin platters on the dresser. This was Miss Abigail's way of testifying her sympathy.

 

"Thankee, marm," returned Sailor Ben, doubtfully.

 

"No talking to the man at the wheel," cried the Captain. Upon which we all laughed. "Spin!" added my grandfather.

 

Sailor Ben resumed:

 

"I leave you to guess the wretchedness as fell upon me, for I've not got the gift to tell you. There I was down on the ship's books for a three years' viage, an' no help for it. I feel nigh to six hundred years old when I think how long that viage was. There isn't no hour-glass as runs slow enough to keep a tally of the slowness of them fust hours. But I done my duty like a man, seem' there wasn't no way of gettin' out of it. I told my shipmates of the trick as had been played on me, an they tried to cheer me up a bit; but I was sore sorrowful for a long spell. Many a night on watch I put my face in my hands and sobbed for thinkin' of the little woman left among the land-sharks, an' no man to have an eye on her, God bless her!"

 

Here Kitty softly drew her chair nearer to Sailor Ben, and rested one hand on his arm.

 

"Our adventures among the whales, I take it, doesn't consarn the present company here assembled. So I give that the go by. There's an end to everythin', even to a whalin' viage. My heart all but choked me the day we put into New Bedford with our cargo of ile. I got my three years' pay in a lump, an' made for New York like a flash of lightnin'. The people hove to and looked at me, as I rushed through the streets like a madman, until I came to the spot where the lodgin'-house stood on West Street. But, Lord love ye, there wasn't no sech lodgin'-house there, but a great new brick shop.

 

"I made bold to go in an' ask arter the old place, but nobody knowed nothin' about it, save as it had been torn down two years or more. I was adrift now, for I had reckoned all them days and nights on gittin' word of Kitty from Dan Shackford, the man as kept the lodgin'.

 

"As I stood there with all the wind knocked out of my sails, the idee of runnin' alongside the perlice-station popped into my head. The perlice was likely to know the latitude of a man like Dan Shackford, who wasn't over an' above respecktible. They did know--he had died in the Tombs jail that day twelvemonth. A coincydunce, wasn't it? I was ready to drop when they told me this; howsomever, I bore up an' give the chief a notion of the fix I was in. He writ a notice which I put into the newspapers every day for three months; but nothin' come of it. I cruised over the city week in and week out I went to every sort of place where they hired women hands; I didn't leave a think undone that a uneddicated man could do. But nothin' come of it. I don't believe there was a wretcheder soul in that big city of wretchedness than me. Sometimes I wanted to lay down in the sheets and die.

 

"Drif............