Seeing that my wife had smiled at him, and my baby thrown a kiss at him, it went against me, you see, not to look after the little rascal a bit that night.

“But you’ve got no business here, you know,” said I; “nobody wants you.”

“I wish I was ashore!” said he,—­“I wish I was ashore!”

With that he begins to rub his eyes so very violent that I stopped.  There was good stuff in him too; for he choked and winked at me, and did it all up, about the sun on the water and a cold in the head, as well as I could myself just about.

I don’t know whether it was on account of being taken a little notice of that night, but the lad always kind of hung about me afterwards; chased me round with his eyes in a way he had, and did odd jobs for me without the asking.

One night before the first week was out, he hauled alongside of me on the windlass.  I was trying a new pipe (and a very good one, too), so I didn’t give him much notice for a while.

“You did this job up shrewd, Kent,” said I, by and by; “how did you steer in?”—­for it did not often happen that the Madonna got fairly out of port with a boy unbeknown in her hold.

“Watch was drunk; I crawled down ahind the whiskey.  It was hot, you bet, and dark.  I lay and thought how hungry I was,” says he.

“Friends at home?” says I.

Upon that he gives me a nod, very short, and gets up and walks off whistling.

The first Sunday out that chap didn’t know any more what to do with himself than a lobster just put on to boil.  Sunday’s cleaning day at sea, you know.  The lads washed up, and sat round, little knots of them, mending their trousers.  Bob got out his cards.  Me and a few mates took it comfortable under the to’gallant fo’castle (I being on watch below), reeling off the stiffest yarns we had in tow.  Kent looked on at euchre awhile, then listened to us awhile, then walked about uneasy.

By and by says Bob, “Look over there,—­spry!” and there was Kent, sitting curled away in a heap under the stern of the long-boat.  He had a book.  Bob crawls behind and snatches it up, unbeknown, out of his hands; then he falls to laughing as if he would strangle, and gives the book a toss to me.  It was a bit of Testament, black and old.  There was writing on the yellow leaf, this way:—­

  “Kentucky Hodge,
    from his Affecshunate mother
  who prays, For you evry day, Amen,”

The boy turned first red, then white, and straightened up quite sudden, but he never said a word, only sat down again and let us laugh it out.  I’ve lost my reckoning if he ever heard the last of it.  He told me one day how he came by the name, but I forget exactly.  Something about an old fellow—­uncle, I believe—­as died in Kentucky, and the name was moniment-like, you see.  He used to seem cut up a bit about it at first, for the lads took to it famously; but he got used to it in a week or two, and, seeing as they meant him no unkindness, took it quite cheery.