‘Boys, we’ll split a watermelon on that,’ says the Child of Calamity; and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles where I was, and put his hand on me.  I was warm and soft and naked; so he says ‘Ouch!’ and jumped back.

’Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys—­there’s a snake here as big as a cow!’

So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me.

‘Come out of that, you beggar!’ says one.

‘Who are you?’ says another.

’What are you after here?  Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.

‘Snake him out, boys.  Snatch him out by the heels.’

I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling.  They looked me over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says—­

‘A cussed thief!  Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!’

‘No,’ says Big Bob, ’less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky blue all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!’

’Good, that ‘s it.  Go for the paint, Jimmy.’

When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin, the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that sort of worked on Davy, and he says—­

’’Vast there!  He ’s nothing but a cub.  ’I’ll paint the man that tetches him!’

So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and Bob put down the paint, and the others didn’t take it up.

‘Come here to the fire, and less see what you’re up to here,’ says Davy.  ’Now set down there and give an account of yourself.  How long have you been aboard here?’

‘Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,’ says I.

‘How did you get dry so quick?’

‘I don’t know, sir.  I’m always that way, mostly.’

‘Oh, you are, are you.  What’s your name?’

I warn’t going to tell my name.  I didn’t know what to say, so I just says—­

‘Charles William Allbright, sir.’

Then they roared—­the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that, because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.

When they got done laughing, Davy says—­

’It won’t hardly do, Charles William.  You couldn’t have growed this much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar’l, you know, and dead at that.  Come, now, tell a straight story, and nobody’ll hurt you, if you ain’t up to anything wrong.  What is your name?’

‘Aleck Hopkins, sir.  Aleck James Hopkins.’

‘Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?’

’From a trading scow.  She lays up the bend yonder.  I was born on her.  Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him—­’

‘Oh, come!’

‘Yes, sir; it’s as true as the world; Pap he says—­’