294 BEACH GRASS 



your story to him and perhaps he'll make an able 

 seaman of you." 



"So I shins up to the deck and the mate tells 

 me to stay quiet till the captain came. To make 

 a long story short the captain agreed to take me 

 on my homeless story, and said that if I was a 

 good boy he would pay me eight dollars a month 

 and give me three suits of clothes. 



"I was so small, the cook put a soap box for me 

 to stand on in the galley so as I could reach up to 

 wash the dishes. I liked it all right and soon 

 got to feelin' at home aboard the old ship. The 

 grub was pretty poor, but then we had sea-ap- 

 petites and could eat anything. Sometimes we 

 had old horse that had been killed in the Civil 

 War. Yes, that's straight, we would get a bullet 

 in our mouths every now and then ! But the 

 ship's biscuits, they was the liveliest things — 

 why sometimes I would put one down by my mug 

 of coffee and it would walk off — not far, but 

 perhaps fourteen inches. 



''Then the cockroaches — we don't never have 

 any as big in these parts. They would come 

 aboard when we were loading ship — big enough 



