“There are some of his traps in it now, I believe; ye can look.”  And we took off some tangled cod-lines and opened the chest.  There was only a round wooden box in the till, and in some idle hour at sea the young sailor had carved his initials and an anchor and the date on the cover.  We found some sail-needles and a palm in this “kit,” as the sailors call it, and a little string of buttons with some needles and yarn and thread in a neat little bag, which perhaps his mother had made for him when he started off on his first voyage.  Besides these things there was only a fanciful little broken buckle, green and gilt, which he might have picked up in some foreign street, and his protection-paper carefully folded, wherein he was certified as being a citizen of the United States, with dark complexion and dark hair.

“He was one of the pleasantest fellows that ever I shipped with,” said the captain, with a gruff tenderness in his voice.  “Always willin’ to do his work himself, and like’s not when the other fellows up the rigging were cold, or ugly about something or ’nother, he’d say something that would set them all laughing, and somehow it made you good-natured to see him round.  He was brought up a Catholic, I s’pose; anyway, he had some beads, and sometimes they would joke him about ’em on board ship, but he would blaze up in a minute, ugly as a tiger.  I never saw him mad about anything else, though he wouldn’t stand it if anybody tried to crowd him.  He fell from the main-to’-gallant yard to the deck, and was dead when they picked him up.  They were off the Bermudas.  I suppose he lost his balance, but I never could see how; he was sure-footed, and as quick as a cat.  They said they saw him try to catch at the stay, but there was a heavy sea running, and the ship rolled just so’s to let him through between the rigging, and he struck the deck like a stone.  I don’t know’s that chest has been opened these ten years,—­I declare it carries me back to look at those poor little traps of his.  Well, it’s the way of the world; we think we’re somebody, and we have our day, but it isn’t long afore we’re forgotten.”

The captain reached over for the paper, and taking out a clumsy pair of steel-bowed spectacles, read it through carefully.  “I’ll warrant he took good care of this,” said he.  “He was an I-talian, and no more of an American citizen than a Chinese; I wonder he hadn’t called himself John Jones, that’s the name most of the foreigners used to take when they got their papers.  I remember once I was sick with a fever in Chelsea Hospital, and one morning they came bringing in the mate of a Portugee brig on a stretcher, and the surgeon asked what his name was.  ’John Jones,’ says he.  ‘O, say something else,’ says the surgeon; ’we’ve got five John Joneses here a’ready, and it’s getting to be no name at all.’  Sailors are great hands for false names; they have a trick of using them when they have any money to leave ashore, for fear