SAILOR JACK'S FIRST VOYAGE.

It was a strange figure that I used to see sitting tilted back on the front porch of the little dingy white house on Cradock Lane. This stony, uphill road was once the turnpike from the town of Mistick through the "FiveMile Woods" to Langham on the north; but since the new, broad highway had been built along the shore of Winthrop's Lake, it had become a lonesome cart-path, its scattering houses inhabited by the questionable characters that a decayed, New England ship-building village breeds. After Dr. Brown was murdered while driving through there one day at dusk, I was forbidden the place. But before that, even before Fay's moonshine whiskey distillery was raided back in the woods, I used to walk up Cradock Lane a good deal, and had learned that the solitary inmate of the little dingy white house was Sailor Jack.

Sailor Jack was generally sitting on the front porch smoking a short, black pipe; Sailor Jack's face was smooth-shaven and rather white, though disfigured by countless wrinkles, a great curved scar over the right cheekbone, and not infrequently a black eye; Sailor Jack's hair was gray and closecropped; Sailor Jack always wore a soft white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, a pair of loose, black trousers, and Congress boots, whose patches on the sole were invariably displayed over the porch railing.

So morose and forbidding a person I had never ventured to accost. One day, however, I picked up an acquaintance with Captain Pingree, the old skipper who lived with his niece in a cosy, red cottage nearer the town; and after I had visited him several times, I asked if he knew anything about Sailor Jack.

"I guess I do," he answered: "the first voyage Sailor Jack ever took was on my ship."

"Do you mind telling me about it?" I said. I had already won the old man's good favor by shinning up the ninety-foot flag-pole behind his house to mend the halyards, so I knew he would be ready enough to talk.

"Certainly not, if you can stan' it," he replied. "Come an' walk on the quarter-deck while I tell ye."

The quarter-deck was an embankment of earth which the captain had built in his garden,-grass-grown, and ornamented along the edges with big shells. Here, at ninety years of age, he used to pace up and down by the hour, to keep his walking-tackle limber, as he said. I fell into step beside him, and after two or three turns he began the story.

In the spring of '46, just after war had broke out with Mexico, I sailed from Boston on the "Nancy Till" with a cargo of cotton goods an' such to trade up the California coast for hides. We weren't more 'n half a day out, when the mate come up draggin' a slim, white-faced lad by the shoulder. "Stowaway!" says he.

I looked the boy over an' see he was pretty thin an' pale. He had only a pair o' loose, black pantaloons on an' a soft, white shirt; an' he wore his brown hair cut short. He might a' been about sixteen, but his face was soft and smooth still. I pitied the lad a heap; but o' course it was out o' the question to put back, so I says to him pretty gruffly:

"Well, now you 've come, youngster, I reckon you'll have to stay an' work, unless we throw ye overboard."

"I came because I wanted to work, sir," he says in a pleasant voice. "I want to work my way down to Mexico and get off and fight the Spaniards."

"I guess you wasn't cut out to do much fightin'," I answered, pityin' him from the bottom of my heart; "an' the work aboard won't be greatly to your likin', either. Take him forward," I added to the mate.

For two or three days I didn't see much of him: I reckon he was too sick to move most o' the time. But after a week he was workin' round with the crew, howbeit he was mighty little use for a long while. He couldn't lift a fathom o' cable at first; an' though he could lay aloft like a monkey before we reached the Line, he never got tough, but always looked white an' soft, an' had the same pleasant, sweet voice that didn't show any sign o' changin'.

There were two other boys aboard,-Ned and Jim. Jim was an over

grown, roarin' blackguard, too much of a coward to fight the men, but ready to bully the life out o' Ned, a little fellow for his years, but plucky an' honest. Sailor Jack, so the crew called the stowaway out o' derision,—took to be a great mate o' Ned's, an' tagged after him most o' the time. Ned didn't like this over well, for it gave Jim somethin' to sneer about; an' one day, when the bully teased him a little too far, he hit Jim a straight blow on the jaw. Jim was up in a second, swearin' like a devil; but before he had a chance to close, Sailor Jack stepped in between :

"I'll fight you," he says, "I'm taller 'n Ned."

I hated to see the boy get hurt, but I knew it 'd do him good; so I had 'em chalk a line an' go at it. Sailor Jack was so spry at first that Jim couldn't get at him. But pretty soon he got careless, an' the brute hit him a blow in the chest like a sledge-hammer. Jack went down with a groan, but was up in a minute an' at Jim like a young fury. He closed up both his eyes in no time, an' then Jim got scared an' bellowed that he'd had enough. As he limped away with the men jeerin' after him, I turned to look at Jack, an' see the front of his shirt was all bloody where he'd been hit.

"Jim didn't have a knife, did he'?" I asked, steppin' forward.

"No, sir," says Jack, jumpin' away from me, "it was just his knuckles;" an' he made for the forward hatch. It was half an hour before he come up again, lookin' paler 'n ever, an' with his shirt all wet down the front where he'd washed it.

After this he followed Ned about closer 'n ever. "It's dum queer," the mate says to me, "how he takes to the feller. An' yet when Ned offered to share his bunk with him, after the fight, he said he'd rather go on sleepin' on deck. He always sleeps under the gunwale there on a coil o' rope, an' gets up about two bells o' the middle watch to douse himself at the waterbuckets, 'stead o' takin' his bath with the rest in the mornin'. He's a dum queer lad, he is."

By this time we had got well down off Patagonia an' were beginnin' to have bitter cold weather. Ned gave Sailor Jack an old padded coat an' a pair o' thick pantaloons, which he needed bad enough. Still Jack wouldn't bunk in the forecastle at night, but slept curled up on the ropes.

One day, before long, we struck a real Cape storm,-howlin' head wind, blue fog, hail an' snow, an' colder 'n all Greenland. We had nearly half-sail above, which had got to come down somehow. It was cruel weather for anybody, let alone the boys; but we might have our masts overboard any minute: so I ordered all hands aloft. Jack started up with the rest; but I hadn't the heart to see him go in a gale that might blow him half a mile to sea in no time.

"You stay below, youngster," I says; "maybe I'll need you."

Hearin' this, Ned hung back: "Please let me stay, too, sir," he says; "I don't think I can do it."

"No, you lubber," I roared, "you've got to go. Do you think I'm goin' to let you soger down here?" I felt pretty mad, an' was just goin' to give him the rope's end, when Sailor Jack spoke up:

"I'll go instead, sir;" an' up he went before I could stop him. That touched Ned's pride, an' without a word he started up the foremast where Jim had just gone. Jim had been uglier 'n ever since the fight; an' I thought to myself, if I was Ned, I shouldn't care for the icy end of a yard with him on a pitch black, stormy night like that. I was bracin' myself by the capstan, thankin' my stars I had new rove the steerin'-gear two days ago, when I heard a cry an' a crash forward, an' there was Ned motionless on the deck. Before I could get to him, Jack was down the ratlines and had knelt by his side, kinder moanin'. I pushed him away an' felt for Ned's heart.

"It's no use whimperin'," I said; "he's done for."

Jack gave a cry an' fell over backward, as if he'd been stunned.

"Take 'em below," I says to the mate, who had just stepped up: "they'll both be washed overboard, if we leave 'em here."

In a few minutes he come back with a kind of a queer grin. "Guess ye didn't know ye had a girl aboard," he says.

"What?" I exclaimed.

"Sailor Jack," he answered: "she was set on Ned, an' followed him to sea in a boy's togs. It's a wonder that lick of Jim's didn't kill her."

Henry Gilbert.

NIGHT IN HELLAS.

Come now as once you came, O Night,
Mantled in darkness, wonderful with stars,
Over dim headlands by the Aegean Sea,

Bid them awaken, all the sounds of Night—
The lapping of the water on the strand,
The wind across the uplands, and beyond,
The low-voiced murmur of the distant hills.

O merciful Night,

Come with your many dreams and bear me back
To the lost wonder of a former time.

The air is heavy with the drifting scent

Of nameless flowers. Among the aged pines
The shadows are alive, and eastward, hark!
The crashing of a terror-stricken stag,
Nymph-hunted down the vales of Thessaly.
Pan is afoot-and out across the hills,
From glen and upland, faintly echoing comes
The wild elusive music of his pipes.
Nearer, the sedge upon the river bank

Sighs to itself—the stream is dumb with mist.
Now all the western slope breaks into flame,

The flaring light of torches blinds the sky,

And fast and hurried sounds the tumultuous chant

Of Maenads, wild Bacchantes, Bassarids—

Then all is hushed again, save for a cry,
Like the cry of a lost soul, far out at sea.

Lauriston Ward.