"On and off, yes," Keith replied. "Mostly on, though. But I very nearly quit as soon as my first ship touched port. She was an old-fashioned square-rigger—you didn't see many like her in those days, and they're a curiosity now. She was bound from Boston to Galveston, and the Lord only knew where else. I'd been living with an old uncle on the Massachusetts coast, and when he died suddenly it left me stranded. His wife was an unamiable shrew, and I guessed it couldn't be worse anywhere than being left with her, so I made up a bundle and started looking for a ship. But they seemed to have all the boys they wanted. While I was on the wharf I ran into a chap about my age who had signed on the Mary S. Billings, and when I told him about my difficulties he helped me to stow away. I went aboard at night and hid among some stores until we were at sea. When they found me I got such a leathering that I knew my aunt didn't even know the rudiments of hitting a fellow. Then they put me to work. It was a hard school, and the Yankee skipper was a brute, but I learned discipline among other things, and after all I don't know that the experience did me any harm, though I wished I was dead many a time then. The other boy told me he was going to skip the ship at Galveston, and so I stayed on and took his job. We went as far as New Zealand and Yokohama before returning to Boston, and by the time I left the ship
