Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/333

 of a sail. After lingering some time the captain’s wife gave the signal, when we raised the end of the plank  and "Old Neptune’s" body was consigned to a watery  grave.



We made the passage to Mobile in seven days. The captain, who owned two-thirds of the schooner, finding  freights very dull, and wishing to lessen his expenses,  discharged the young man, the boy, and myself. The boy was, indeed, "a stranger in a strange land." We all felt much sympathy for him.

Soon after leaving the schooner, I visited my uncle, Major Thomas Sturtevant, at Spring Hill, about six miles  out from the city. The few weeks that I remained with him I enjoyed much, the plantation hands giving me a  great deal of amusement.

After leaving my uncle’s home I passed over Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans. While there I fell in with an old shipmate by the name of Charlie Rugg, who was working at ship-painting in Algiers, opposite New  Orleans. I assisted him about painting the spars of the ship Nathaniel Kimball. While at work on the