Once, in the middle of the Pacific, the captain dropped down in his bell into the midst of a society of sea people who had no hair, but the backs of their heads were shaped like sou’-wester hats.  The front rim formed one eyebrow for both eyes, and they could move the peak behind as beavers move their tails, and it helped them to go up and down in the water.  They were not exactly mermaids, Fred said, they had no particular tail, it all ended in a kind of fringe of seaweed, which swept after them when they moved, like the train of a lady’s dress.  The captain was so delighted with them that he stayed below much longer than usual; but in an unlucky moment some of the sea people let the water into the diving-bell, and the captain was nearly drowned.  He did become senseless, but when his body floated, it was picked up and restored to life by the first mate, who had been cruising, with tears in his eyes, over the spot in the ship’s boat for seven days without taking anything to eat.—­“He was a Dartmouth man, too,” said Fred Johnson.

“He evidently knew what to do in the emergency of drowning,” thought I.

I feel as if any one who hears of Fred’s stories must think he was a liar.  But he really was not.  Mr. Johnson was very strict with the boys in some ways, though he was so good-natured, and Fred had been taught to think a lie to get himself out of a scrape or anything of that sort quite as wrong as we should have thought it.  But he liked telling things.  I believe he made them up and amused himself with them in his own head if he had no one to listen.  He used to say, “Come and sit in the kitchen garden this afternoon, and I’ll tell you.”  And whether he meant me to think them true or not, I certainly did believe in his stories.

One thing always struck me as very odd about Fred Johnson.  He was very fond of fruit, and when we sat on the wall and ate the white currants with pounded sugar in a mug between us, I believe he always ate more than I did, though he was “telling” all the time, and I had nothing to do but to listen and eat.

He certainly talked very slowly, in a dreary, monotonous sort of voice, which suited his dull, pasty face better than it suited the subject of his exciting narratives.  But I think it seemed to make one all the more impatient to hear what was coming.  A very favourite place of ours for “telling” was the wharf (Johnson’s wharf, as it was called), where the canal boats came and went, and loaded and unloaded.  We made a “coastguard station” among some old timber in the corner, and here we used to sit and watch for the boats.

When a real barge came we generally went over it, for the men knew Fred, and were very good-natured.  The barges seemed more like ships than the canal boats did.  They had masts, and could sail when they got into the river.  Sometimes we went down into the cabin, and peeped into the little berths with sliding shutter fronts, and the lockers, which were like a fixed seat running round two sides of the cabin, with lids opening and showing places to put away things in.  I was not famous in the nursery for keeping my things very tidy, but I fancied I could stow my clothes away to perfection in a locker, and almost cook my own dinner with the bargeman’s little stove.