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368 “I believe you, my boy,” said Captain Wicks.

The next day the sailor was observed with his nose aloft.

“Don't you get looking at these sticks,” the captain said, “or you'll have a fit and fall overboard.”

Mac turned towards the speaker with rather a wild eye. “Why, I see what looks like a patch of dry rot up yonder, that I bet I could stick my fist into,” said he.

“Looks as if a fellow could stick his head into it, don't it?” returned Wicks. “But there's no good prying into things that can't be mended.”

“I think I was a Currency Ass to come on board of her!” reflected Mac.

“Well, I never said she was seaworthy,” replied the captain: “I only said she could show her blooming heels to anything afloat. And besides, I don't know that it's dry rot; I kind of sometimes hope it isn't. Here; turn to and heave the log; that'll cheer you up.”

“Well, there's no denying it, you're a holy captain,” said Mac.

And from that day on, he made but the one reference to the ship's condition; and that was whenever Tommy drew upon his cellar. “Here's to the junk trade!” he would say, as he held out his can of sherry.

“Why do you always say that?” asked Tommy.

“I had an uncle in the business,” replied Mac, and launched at once into a yarn, in which an incredible number of the characters were “laid out as nice as you would want to see,” and the oaths made up about two-fifths of every conversation.

Only once he gave them a taste of his violence; he talked of it, indeed, often; “I'm rather a violent man,” he would say, not without pride; but this was the only specimen. Of a sudden, he turned on Hemstead in the ship's waist, knocked him against the