“No, no,” said the captain; “eloquent dumb show won’t do with me; you didn’t come, like Mother Shipton, upon a birch broom.  How did you come on board my vessel?”

“I walked on board,” said the stranger.

“You walked on board; and where did you conceal yourself?”

“Below.”

“Very good; and why didn’t you stay below altogether?”

“Because I wanted fresh air.  I’m in a delicate state of health, you see; it doesn’t do to stay in a confined place too long.”

“Confound the binnacle!” said the captain; it was his usual oath when anything bothered him, and he could not make it out.  “Confound the binnacle!—­what a delicate-looking animal you are.  I wish you had stayed where you were; your delicacy would have been all the same to me.  Delicate, indeed!”

“Yes, very,” said the stranger, coolly.

There was something so comic in the assertion of his delicateness of health, that we should all have laughed; but we were somewhat scared, and had not the inclination.

“How have you lived since you came on board?” inquired the captain.

“Very indifferently.”

“But how?  What have you eaten? and what have you drank?”

“Nothing, I assure you.  All I did while was below was—­”

“What?”

“Why, I sucked my thumbs like a polar bear in its winter quarters.”

And as he spoke the stranger put his two thumbs into his mouth, and extraordinary thumbs they were, too, for each would have filled an ordinary man’s mouth.

“These,” said the stranger, pulling them out, and gazing at them wistfully, and with a deep sigh he continued,—­

“These were thumbs at one time; but they are nothing now to what they were.”

“Confound the binnacle!” muttered the captain to himself, and then he added, aloud,—­

“It’s cheap living, however; but where are you going to, and why did you come aboard?”

“I wanted a cheap cruise, and I am going there and back.”

“Why, that’s where we are going,” said the captain.

“Then we are brothers,” exclaimed the stranger, hopping off the water-cask like a kangaroo, and bounding towards the captain, holding out his hand as though he would have shaken hands with him.

“No, no,” said the captain; “I can’t do it.”

“Can’t do it!” exclaimed the stranger, angrily.  “What do you mean?”

“That I can’t have anything to do with contraband articles; I am a fair trader, and do all above board.  I haven’t a chaplain on board, or he should offer up prayers for your preservation, and the recovery of your health, which seems so delicate.”

“That be—­”

The stranger didn’t finish the sentence; he merely screwed his mouth up into an incomprehensible shape, and puffed out a lot of breath, with some force, and which sounded very much like a whistle:  but, oh, what thick breath he had, it was as much like smoke as anything I ever saw, and so my shipmate said.