Clean bowled in the middle stump!' laughed the clerk. 'My name's 'Uish

if you want to know. Everybody has a false nyme in the Pacific. Lay you

five to three the captain 'as.'

So I have too,' replied the captain; 'and I've never told my own since

the day I tore the title page out of my Bowditch and flung the damned

thing into the sea. But I'll tell it to you, boys. John Davis is my

name. I'm Davis of the Sea Ranger.'

'Dooce you are!' said Hush. 'And what was she? a pirate or a slyver?'

She was the fastest barque out of Portland, Maine,' replied the

captain; 'and for the way I lost her, I might as well have bored a hole

in her side with an auger.'

'Oh, you lost her, did you?' said the clerk. ''Ope she was insured?'

No answer being returned to this sally, Huish, still brimming over with

vanity and conversation, struck into another subject.

'I've a good mind to read you my letter,' said he. 'I've a good fist

with a pen when I choose, and this is a prime lark. She was a barmaid

I ran across in Northampton; she was a spanking fine piece, no end

of style; and we cottoned at first sight like parties in the play. I

suppose I spent the chynge of a fiver on that girl. Well, I 'appened to

remember her nyme, so I wrote to her, and told her 'ow I had got rich,

and married a queen in the Hislands, and lived in a blooming palace.

The Ebb-Tide