Johnson, on the other hand, I often met.  I could never learn this man’s country; and though he himself claimed to be American, neither his English nor his education warranted the claim.  In all likelihood he was of Scandinavian birth and blood, long pickled in the forecastles of English and American ships.  It is possible that, like so many of his race in similar positions, he had already lost his native tongue.  In mind, at least, he was quite denationalised; thought only in English—­to call it so; and though by nature one of the mildest, kindest, and most feebly playful of mankind, he had been so long accustomed to the cruelty of sea discipline, that his stories (told perhaps with a giggle) would sometimes turn me chill.  In appearance, he was tall, light of weight, bold and high-bred of feature, dusky-haired, and with a face of a clean even brown:  the ornament of outdoor men.  Seated in a chair, you might have passed him off for a baronet or a military officer; but let him rise, and it was Fo’c’s’le Jack that came rolling toward you, crab-like; let him but open his lips, and it was Fo’c’s’le Jack that piped and drawled his ungrammatical gibberish.  He had sailed (among other places) much among the islands; and after a Cape Horn passage with its snow-squalls and its frozen sheets, he announced his intention of “taking a turn among them Kanakas.”  I thought I should have lost him soon; but according to the unwritten usage of mariners, he had first to dissipate his wages.  “Guess I’ll have to paint this town red,” was his hyperbolical expression; for sure no man ever embarked upon a milder course of dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little parlour behind Black Tom’s public house, with a select corps of old particular acquaintances, all from the South Seas, and all patrons of a long yarn, a short pipe, and glasses round.

Black Tom’s, to the front, presented the appearance of a fourth-rate saloon, devoted to Kanaka seamen, dirt, negrohead tobacco, bad cigars, worse gin, and guitars and banjos in a state of decline.  The proprietor, a powerful coloured man, was at once a publican, a ward politician, leader of some brigade of “lambs” or “smashers,” at the wind of whose clubs the party bosses and the mayor were supposed to tremble, and (what hurt nothing) an active and reliable crimp.  His front quarters, then, were noisy, disreputable, and not even safe.  I have seen worse frequented saloons where there were fewer scandals; for Tom was often drunk himself; and there is no doubt the Lambs must have been a useful body, or the place would have been closed.  I remember one day, not long before an election, seeing a blind man, very well dressed, led up to the counter and remain a long while in consultation with the negro.  The pair looked so ill-assorted, and the awe with which the drinkers fell back and left them in the midst of an impromptu privacy was so unusual in such a place, that I turned to my next neighbour with a