So, late in the fall, Charley went to sea.  Grandmother and the aunts felt dreadfully sad when it came to the parting; but he was full of satisfaction and triumph, and never shed a tear.  The “Helen Weeks,” as Captain Bradley’s ship was named, sailed from Boston on the second of November, and for fifteen months nobody at home heard a word of Charley.

Those were sad days at the old Brush Farm.  Grandmother fell ill from anxiety, and even Aunt Prue looked white and miserable.  Aunt Greg and Aunt Hitty spent their time crying in corners, and “Why did we let him go?” was the language of all their hearts.  But in February, when everything was at its coldest and iciest, Charley came back,—­Charley or his ghost, for the tall, thin, starved-looking ragged boy set down at the gate was very unlike the stout, rosy lad of the year before.

He was so weak and forlorn that it was several days before he recovered enough to explain what had happened to him, and then it was little by little, and not as I give it, in one connected story.

“I don’t ever want to go to sea again,” he began.  “It aint a bit like what we thought it was.  I don’t know why them chaps in the ‘Reader’ called it ‘blue.’  It’s green and black and yellow, and all kinds of colors, but I never see it look blue exceptin’ when folks was looking at it from the land.  It’s cold, too, and wet and nasty.  I wasn’t dry once for the first two months, it seems to me.  Ugh!  I hate it.  Never let to sleep till you’re rested, and such horrid stuff to eat, and sick—­my, how sick I was!  Captain Bradley was a fair enough sort of man, but he fell ill of China fever, and we had to leave him behind in Canton, and Bill Bunce, the first mate, took his place.  After that we had a hard time enough.  I thought it was bad at first, but it wasn’t nothing to that.  He was always walloping us boys, and swearing and kicking and cuffing us about.  Then we had a storm, and lost our mainmast, and came near foundering; and then we were stuck in a calm for three weeks, and the water aboard ran short.  That was the time I had the fever.  I’d have died, I know, if it hadn’t been for Tad Brice.  He was one of the sailors, and a real nice man.  His boy at home was just as old as I am, and he sort of took an interest in me from the start.  He used to come in and feed me, and when we were put on allowance, he saved half his water ration for me; and when I got to crying, and thinking about home and you all, he’d—­” Here Charley choked and was silent.  Aunt Hitty, who sat next, possessed herself of his thin hand and wept silently over it.

“When I went away I meant to be a pirate, you know,” went on Charley.

“A pirate!” cried Aunt Hitty and Aunt Greg in awe-struck voices.