“What made you leave Ireland, Jack?” I asked.

“I left it, I guess, same as you did, because I couldn’t live in it.  My father was a fisherman, and he was drowned.  Mother was left with eight children, and we were as poor as church mice.  I was the oldest, so I went to Belfast and got a billet on board ship as cabin boy.  I made three voyages from Liverpool to America, and was boxed about pretty badly, but I learned to handle the ropes.  My last port there was Boston, and I ran away and lived with a Yankee farmer named Small.  He was a nigger driver, he was, working the soul out of him early and late.  He had a boat, and I used to take farm produce in it across the bay to Boston, where the old man’s eldest son kept a boarding-house.  There was a daughter at home, a regular high-flier.  She used to talk to me as if I was a nigger.  One day when we were having dinner, she was asking me questions about Ireland, and about my mother, sisters, and brothers.  Then I got mad, thinking how poor they were, and I could not help them.  ‘Miss Small,’ I said, ’my mother is forty years old, and she has eight children, and she looks younger than you do, and has not lost a tooth.’

“Miss Small, although quite young, was nearly toothless, so she was mad enough to kill me; but her brother Jonathan was at table, and he took my part, saying, ‘Sarves you right, Sue;’ why can’t you leave Jack alone?’

“But Sue made things most unpleasant, and I told Jonathan I couldn’t stay on the farm, and would rather go to sea again.  Jonathan said he, too, was tired of farming, and he would go with me.  He could manage a boat across Boston Harbour, but he had never been to sea.  Next time there was farm stuff to go to Boston he went with me; we left the boat with his brother, and shipped in a whaler bound for the South Seas.  I used to show him how to handle the ropes, to knot and splice, and he soon became a pretty good hand, though he was not smart aloft when reefing.  His name was Small, but he was not a small man; he was six feet two, and the strongest man on board, and he didn’t allow any man to thrash me, because I was little.  After eighteen months’ whaling he persuaded me to run away from the ship at Hobarton; he said he was tired of the greasy old tub; so one night we bundled up our swags, dropped into a boat, and took the road to Launceston, where we expected to find a vessel going to Melbourne.  When we were half-way across the island, we called just before sundown at a farmhouse to see if we could get something to eat, and lodging for the night.  We found two women cooking supper in the kitchen, and Jonathan said to the younger one, ’Is the old man at home?’ She replied quite pertly: 

“’Captain Massey is at home, if that’s what you mean by ‘old man.’

“‘Well, my dear,’ said Jonathan, ’will you just tell him that we are two seamen on our way to Launceston, and we’d like to have a word with him.’