THE FATTED CALF. 29 



under the cabin-stairs, drew out a bag of letters, 

 and in so doing knocked the grindstone against a 

 demijohn of turpentine, which toppled over help- 

 lessly, a reeking, jingling wreck, with the conse- 

 quence that thereafter the old man made me keep 

 a Domesday Book, to record everything I managed 

 to lose or break on board the ship ; how I came to 

 be held to blame whenever a tool was mislaid, 

 with the penalty of having to write it in the Book 

 of Judgment, so that by-and-by when I found a 

 lost article I secretly pitched it overboard rather 

 than be blamed for finding it ; how, one Sunday 

 morning, the old man took an observation of the 

 sun and gave the data to me to work out the 

 reckoning, but was not pleased with my answer, 

 and accordingly grabbed me by the hair and lifted 

 me clean off the deck, so that I took care to get 

 my hair cut immediately ; and when the old man 

 made another observation that afternoon and gave 

 it to me in the same way and with the same 

 result, he grabbed for my hair again and, missing 

 that, lifted me off the deck by my ears, saying 

 he'd " stretch 'em out as long as a jackass ! " 

 and this despite the fact that I was right and he 

 was wrong, for we were cruising down the line 

 and during the night we had crossed the Equator, 

 so that we had to apply our corrections differ- 



