I asked him why he didn’t take me from the train at the first stopping-place and return to Rivermouth by the down train at 4.30.  He explained having purchased a ticket for Boston, he considered himself bound to the owners (the stockholders of the road) to fulfil his part of the contract!  To use his own words, he had “shipped for the viage.”

This struck me as being so deliciously funny, that after I was in bed and the light was out, I couldn’t help laughing aloud once or twice.  I suppose the Admiral must have thought I was meditating another escape, for he made periodical visits to my bed throughout the night, satisfying himself by kneading me all over that I hadn’t evaporated.

I was all there the next morning, when Sailor Ben half awakened me by shouting merrily, “All hands on deck!” The words rang in my ears like a part of my own dream, for I was at that instant climbing up the side of the Rawlings to offer myself as cabin-boy.

The Admiral was obliged to shake me roughly two or three times before he could detach me from the dream.  I opened my eyes with effort, and stared stupidly round the room.  Bit by bit my real situation dawned on me.  ’What a sickening sensation that is, when one is in trouble, to wake up feeling free for a moment, and then to find yesterday’s sorrow all ready to go on again!

“’Well, little messmate, how fares it?”

I was too much depressed to reply.  The thought of returning to Rivermouth chilled me.  How could I face Captain Nutter, to say nothing of Miss Abigail and Kitty?  How the Temple Grammar School boys would look at me!  How Conway and Seth Rodgers would exult over my mortification!  And what if the Rev.  ’Wibird Hawkins should allude to me in his next Sunday’s sermon?

Sailor Ben was wise in keeping an eye on me, for after these thoughts took possession of my mind, I wanted only the opportunity to give him the slip.

The keeper of the lodgings did not supply meals to his guests; so we breakfasted at a small chophouse in a crooked street on our way to the cars.  The city was not astir yet, and looked glum and careworn in the damp morning atmosphere.

Here and there as we passed along was a sharp-faced shop-boy taking down shutters; and now and then we met a seedy man who had evidently spent the night in a doorway.  Such early birds and a few laborers with their tin kettles were the only signs of life to be seen until we came to the station, where I insisted on paying for my own ticket.  I didn’t relish being conveyed from place to place, like a felon changing prisons, at somebody else’s expense.

On entering the car I sunk into a seat next the window, and Sailor Ben deposited himself beside me, cutting off all chance of escape.

The car filled up soon after this, and I wondered if there was anything in my mien that would lead the other passengers to suspect I was a boy who had run away and was being brought back.