FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS 
137 
and supply hot coffee and rolls, with perhaps some¬ 
thing else of a more potent nature in bottles, to 
merchant-sailors and men-o’-war’s-men, of whom 
there were then always a considerable number in 
port. 44 Old Joe ” declared his Consul 44 did him ” 
out of his lot, and in finishing his yarn would say : 
44 He was all same dam thief, Mister Snow—all same 
dam rascal!” 44 Old Joe ” continued to go to sea 
with me for several years, not, however, as a hunter, 
but as 44 bosun,” and an excellent 44 bosun ” he was. 
He was also a first-rate 44 sailor-man,” and knew his 
business from A to Z. He could neither read nor 
write, and used to pass his spare time doing some 
sailor’s job about the vessel or attending to the 
skins, or, if there was nothing else to do, he would 
make sinnet for hours on end. He was never idle. 
When a gale was blowing, 44 Old Joe ” was in his 
element. With a quid of tobacco in his mouth, he 
would take the wheel, and remain at it, not only all 
through his own watch, but through a second, or 
even until the gale was over, unless we had to 
44 heave to.” He was wonderfully careful, as there 
was need to be, when heavy 44 wollies ” would strike 
the vessel, and almost lay her on her beam ends. 
When chaffed about his life being saved through 
getting drunk on Japanese sake, on the occasion when 
he missed his passage on the Caroline , he used to say 
that if he had been aboard he would have been at 
the wheel, and she would never have been lost. 
The poor old fellow met with an untimely end. 
He shipped on board an American ship as 44 bosun,” 
and one day had to go aloft. He had not been in a 
44 square-rigger ” for many years, and the old man 
was nearly seventy. Going aloft was too much for 
