“Come, Captain,” said I, “there are degrees in everything.  You know American ships have a bad name; you know perfectly well if it wasn’t for the high wage and the good food, there’s not a man would ship in one if he could help; and even as it is, some prefer a British ship, beastly food and all.”

“O, the lime-juicers?” said he.  “There’s plenty booting in lime-juicers, I guess; though I don’t deny but what some of them are soft.”  And with that he smiled like a man recalling something.  “Look here, that brings a yarn in my head,” he resumed; “and for the sake of the joke, I’ll give myself away.  It was in 1874, I shipped mate in the British ship Maria, from ’Frisco for Melbourne.  She was the queerest craft in some ways that ever I was aboard of.  The food was a caution; there was nothing fit to put your lips to—­but the lime-juice, which was from the end bin no doubt:  it used to make me sick to see the men’s dinners, and sorry to see my own.  The old man was good enough, I guess; Green was his name; a mild, fatherly old galoot.  But the hands were the lowest gang I ever handled; and whenever I tried to knock a little spirit into them, the old man took their part!  It was Gilbert and Sullivan on the high seas; but you bet I wouldn’t let any man dictate to me.  ’You give me your orders, Captain Green,’ I said, ’and you’ll find I’ll carry them out; that’s all you’ve got to say.  You’ll find I do my duty,’ I said; ’how I do it is my lookout; and there’s no man born that’s going to give me lessons.’  Well, there was plenty dirt on board that Maria first and last.  Of course, the old man put my back up, and, of course, he put up the crew’s; and I had to regular fight my way through every watch.  The men got to hate me, so’s I would hear them grit their teeth when I came up.  At last, one day, I saw a big hulking beast of a Dutchman booting the ship’s boy.  I made one shoot of it off the house and laid that Dutchman out.  Up he came, and I laid him out again.  ‘Now,’ I said, ’if there’s a kick left in you, just mention it, and I’ll stamp your ribs in like a packing-case.’  He thought better of it, and never let on; lay there as mild as a deacon at a funeral; and they took him below to reflect on his native Dutchland.  One night we got caught in rather a dirty thing about 25 south.  I guess we were all asleep; for the first thing I knew there was the fore-royal gone.  I ran forward, bawling blue hell; and just as I came by the foremast, something struck me right through the forearm and stuck there.  I put my other hand up, and by George! it was the grain; the beasts had speared me like a porpoise.  ‘Cap’n!’ I cried.—­’What’s wrong?’ says he.—­’They’ve grained me,’ says I.—­’Grained you?’ says he.  ’Well, I’ve been looking for that.’——­’And by God,’ I cried, ’I want to have some of these beasts murdered for it!’—­’Now, Mr. Nares,’ says he, ’you better go below.  If I had been one of the men, you’d have got more than this.  And I want no more of your language