His Next
Chance Was With The Carpenter And Sail-Maker, And He Lounged Round
The After Hatchway Until The Last Had Gone Down.
We had now had
fun enough out of him, and taking pity on him, offered him a pot
of
Tea, and a cut at the kid, with the rest, in the forecastle.
He was hungry, and it was growing dark, and he began to see that
there was no use in playing the caballero any longer, and came
down into the forecastle, put into the "grub" in sailor's style,
threw off all his airs, and enjoyed the joke as much as any one;
for a man must take a joke among sailors. He gave us the whole
account of his adventures in the country, - roguery and all - and
was very entertaining. He was a smart, unprincipled fellow, was at
the bottom of most of the rascally doings of the country, and gave
us a great deal of interesting information in the ways of the world
we were in.
Saturday, Feb. 13th. Were called up at midnight to slip for
a violent north-easter, for this rascally hole of San Pedro is
unsafe in every wind but a south-wester, which is seldom known
to blow more than once in a half century. We went off with a
flowing sheet, and hove-to under the lee of Catalina island,
where we lay three days, and then returned to our anchorage.
Tuesday, Feb. 23d. This afternoon, a signal was made from the
shore, and we went off in the gig, and found the agent's clerk,
who had been up to the pueblo, waiting at the landing-place, with a
package under his arm, covered with brown papers and tied carefully
with twine.
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