among civilised men, but gradually the old hunter’s strength returned, and each day, as he travelled on, his health seemed to improve. He also became more inclined to talk; not only to ask questions, but to speak of himself. Religious subjects, however, he avoided as much as possible; indeed, to human judgment, his mind appeared too darkened, and his heart too hardened, to enable him to comprehend even the simplest truths. “You’d like to know something about me, friend Redskin, I’ve no doubt,” said the old man to Peter, when one day he had got into a more than usually loquacious mood. “It’s strange, but it’s a fact, I’ve a desire to talk about my early days, and yet, for forty years or more, maybe, I’ve never thought of them, much less spoken about them. I was raised in the old country—that’s where most of the pale-faces you see hereabouts came from. My father employed a great many men, and so I may say he was a chief; he was a farmer of the old style, and hated anything new. He didn’t hold education in any great esteem, and so he took no pains to give me any, and one thing I may say, I took no pains to obtain it. My mother, of that I am certain, was a kind, good woman, and did her best to instruct me. She taught me to sing little songs, and night and morning made me kneel down, with my hands put together, and say over some words which I then though! very good—and I am sure they were, as she taught me them; but I have long, long ago forgotten what they were. She also used to take me with her to a large, large house, where there were a great number of people singing and often talking together; and then there was one man in a black dress, who got up in a high place in the middle, and had all the talk to himself for a long time, I used to think; but I didn’t mind that, as I used generally to go to sleep when he began, and only woke up when he had done.

“I was very happy whenever I was with my mother, but I didn’t see her for some days, and then they took me into the room where she slept, and there I saw her lying on a bed; but she didn’t speak me, she didn’t even look at me, for her eyes were closed, and her cheek was cold—very cold. I didn’t know then what had happened, though I cried very much. I never saw her again. From that time I began to be very miserable; I don’t know why; I think it was not having my mother to go to and talk to. After that I don’t know exactly what happened to me; for some time I got scolded, and kicked, and beaten, and then I was sent to a place where there were a good many other boys; and, thinks I to myself, I shall be happier here; but instead of that I was much more beaten and scolded, till I got a feeling that I didn’t care what I did, or what became of me. That feeling never left me. I was always ready to do anything proposed by other boys, such as robbing orchards, or playing all sorts of pranks. I now and then went home to see my father; but I remember very little about him, except that he was a stout man, with a ruddy countenance. If he did not scold me and beat me, he certainly did not say much to me; I never felt towards him as I had done towards my mother. I must have been a biggish boy, though I was still nearly at the bottom of the school, when another lad and I got into some scrape, and were to be flogged. He proposed that we should run away, and I at once agreed, without considering where we should run to, or what we should gain by our run. There is a saying among the pale-faces, ‘out of the frying pan into the fire.’ We soon found that we had got into a very hot fire. After many days’ running, sleeping under hedges and in barns, and living on turnips and crusts of bread, which we bought with the few pence we had in our pockets, we reached a sea-port town. Seeing a large ship about to sail, we agreed that we would be sailors, if any one would take us. We were very hungry and hadn’t a coin left to buy food, so aboard we went. The ship was just sailing,—the cook’s boy had run away and the captain’s cabin boy had just died,—and so we were shipped, without a question being asked, to take their places. They didn’t inquire our names, but called us Bill and Tom, which were the names of the other boys. The captain took me into his service, and called me Bill, and my companion, who fell to the cook, was called Tom. I don’t know which was the most miserable. Tom had the dirtiest and hardest work, and was not only the cook’s but everybody else’s servant. I received the most kicks and thrashings, and had the largest amount of oaths and curses showered down on my head. We were both of us very ill, but our masters didn’t care for that, and kicked us up to work whenever they found us lying down. Away we sailed; we thought that we should never come to land again. I didn’t know where we were going, but I found we were steering towards the south and west. Week after week I saw a wild, high headland on our right hand, and then we had mist, and snow, and heavy weather, and were well nigh driven back; but at last we were steering north, and the weather became fine and pleasant. The ship put into many strange ports; some were in this big country of America, and some were in islands, so we heard; but neither Tom nor I was ever for one moment allowed to set foot on shore.

“Often and often did we bitterly repent our folly, and wish ourselves back home; but wishing was of no use. We found that we were slaves without the possibility of escape. Tom, who had more learning by a great deal than I had, said one day that he would go and appeal to the Consul,—I think he was called, a British officer at the port where we lay,—when the mate, who heard him, laughed, and told him, with an oath, that he might go and complain to whomsoever he liked; but that both he and Bill had signed papers, and had no power to get away. By this Tom knew that if we complained the captain would produce the papers signed by the other boys, and that we should be supposed to be them, and have no remedy. Tom then proposed that we should play all sorts of pranks, and behave as badly as we could. We tried the experiment, but we soon found that we had made a mistake; for our masters beat and starved us till we were glad to promise not again to do the same. Our only hope was that we should some day get a chance of running away; and, if it hadn’t been for that, we should, I believe, have jumped overboard and drowned ourselves. Month after month passed by, the ship continued trading from port to port in the Pacific Ocean,—as the big lake you’ve heard speak of, friend Redskin, is called,—over to the west there; but the chance we looked for never came. We then hoped that the ship would be cast away, and that so we might be free of our tyrants. If all had been drowned but ourselves we shouldn’t have cared. At last, after we’d been away three years or more, we heard that the ship was going home. We didn’t conceal our pleasure. It didn’t last long. Another captain came on board one day. I heard our captain observe to him, ‘You shall have them both a bargain. Thrash them well, and I’ll warrant you’ll get work out of them.’ I didn’t know what he meant at the time. In the evening, when the strange captain’s boat was called away, Tom and I were ordered to get up our bags and jump in. We refused, and said we wanted to go home. We had better have kept silence. Down came a shower of blows on our shoulders, and, amid the jeers and laughter of our shipmates, we were forced into the boat. We found ourselves aboard a whaler just come out, with the prospect of remaining in those parts three years at least. You’ve heard speak, Peter, of the mighty fish of the big lake. The largest sturgeon you ever set eyes on is nothing to them—just a chipmunk to a buffalo. We had harder and dirtier work now than before—catching, cutting out, and boiling down the huge whales—and our masters were still more cruel and brutal. We were beaten and knocked about worse than ever, and often well nigh starved by having our rations taken from us. How we managed to live through that time I don’t know. I scarcely like to think of it. The ship sailed about in every direction; sometimes where the sun was so hot that we could scarce bear our clothes on our backs, and sometimes amid floating mountains of ice, with snow and sleet beating down on us. At last, when we had got our ship nearly full of oil, and it was said that we should soon go home, we put into a port, on the west coast of this continent, to obtain fresh provisions. There were a few white people settled there, but most of the inhabitants were redskins. The white men had farms, ranchos they were called, and the natives worked for them.

“Tom and I agreed that, as the ship was soon going home, the captain would probably try to play off the same trick on us that our first captain had done, and so we determined to be beforehand with him. We were now big, strongish fellows; not as strong as we might have been if we had been better fed and less knocked about; but still we thought that we could take good care of ourselves. We hadn’t much sense though, or knowledge of what people on shore do; for how should we, when you see that since the day we left our native country, when we were little ignorant chaps, we hadn’t once set our feet on dry land. Tom swore, and so did I, that if we once did reach the shore, we’d get away as far from the ocean as we could, and never again smell a breath of it as long as we lived. How to get there was the difficulty. We had always before been watched; and so, to throw our shipmates off their guard, we pretended to think of nothing but about going home, and our talk was all of what we would do when we got back to old England. We said that we were very much afraid of the savages on shore, and wondered any one could like to go among them. After a time, we found that we were no longer watched as we used to be. This gave us confidence. The next thing was to arrange how we were to get on shore. We neither of us could swim; and, besides, the distance was considerable, and there were sharks—fish which can bite a man’s leg off as easily as a white fish bites a worm in two. We observed that, in the cool of the evening, some boats and canoes used to pull round the ship, and sometimes came alongside to offer things for sale to the men. Tom and I agreed that if we could jump into one of them while the owner was on board, we might get off without being discovered. Night after night we waited, till our hearts sunk within us, thinking we should never succeed; but, the very night before the ship was to sail, several people came below, and, while they were chaffering with the men, Tom and I slipped up on deck. My heart seemed ready to jump out of my skin with anxiety as I looked over the side. There, under the fore-chains, was a canoe with a few things in her, but no person. I glanced round. The second mate was the only man on deck besides Tom, who had gone over to the other side. I beckoned to Tom. The mate had his back to us, being busily engaged in some work or other, over which he was bending. Tom sprang over to me, and together we slid down into the canoe. The ship swung with her head towards the shore, or the mate would have seen us. We pulled as for our lives; not, however, for the usual landing-place, but for a little bay on one side, where it appeared that we could easily get on shore. Every moment we expected to see a boat put off from the ship to pursue us, or a gun fired; but the sun had set, and it was growing darker and darker, and that gave us some hope. Still we could be seen clearly enough from the ship if anybody was looking for us. The mate had a pair of sharp eyes. ‘He’ll flay us alive if he catches us,’ said I. ‘Never,’ answered Tom, in a low tone; ‘I’ll jump overboard and be drowned whenever I see a boat make chase after us.’ ‘Don’t do that, Tom,’ said I; ‘hold on to the last. They can but kill us in the end, and we don’t know what may happen to give us a chance of escape.’ You see, friend Peter, that has been my maxim ever since, and I’ve learned to know for certain that that is the right thing.

“Well, before long we did see a boat leave the ship. It was too dark to learn who had gone over the side into her. We pulled for dear life for a few seconds, when Tom cried out that he knew we should be taken. I told him to lie down in the bottom of the canoe, and that if the ship’s boat came near us I would strip off my shirt and pretend to be an Injun. At first he wouldn’t consent; but, as the boat came on, some muskets were fired, and suddenly he said he’d do as I proposed, and he lay down, and I stripped off my shirt and smoothed down, my hair, which was as long as an Injun’s. On came the boat; I pulled coolly on as if in no way concerned. The boat came on—she neared us. Now or never, I thought; so I sang out, in a feigned voice, and pointed with my paddle towards the other side of the harbour. I don’t think I ever felt as I did at that moment. Did they know me? or should I deceive them? If the mate was there I knew that we should have no chance. The people in the boat ceased pulling. I didn’t move either, though the canoe, with the last stroke I had given, slid on. Again I pointed with my paddle, gave a flourish with it, and away I went as if I had no business with them. I could not understand how I had so easily deceived my shipmates, and every instant I expected them to be after us. At last we lost sight of them in the gloom; but Tom, even then, was unwilling to get up and take his paddle. I told him that, if he didn’t, we should have a greater chance of being caught. The moment I said that, up he jumped, and paddled away so hard that I could scarcely keep the canoe in the right course for the place where we wanted to land. The stars helped us with their light; and, as we got close in with the shore, we found the mouth of a stream.

“Though we had so longed to get on shore we felt afraid to land, not knowing what we should do with ourselves. The shore looked so strange, and we expected to see all sorts of wild animals and snakes which we had heard talk of. Tom was the most timid, ‘It was bad aboard, Bill,’ said he, ‘but if we was to meet a bear or a buffalo what what should we do?’ I couldn’t just answer him; but when we found the river we agreed that we would pull up it as far as we could go, and it would carry us some way into the country at all events. We little knew the size of this mighty land, or of the big, long, long rivers running for hundreds of miles through it. This America of yours is a wonderful country, friend Redskin, if you did but know it. Well, up the river we pulled for some miles; it was but a mere brook, you’ll understand, but we thought it a great river. It was silent enough, for there were no habitations except a few native wigwams. We had all the night before us, that was one thing in our favour. As on we went we heard a roaring, splashing noise, which increased. ‘Hillo! here’s a heavy sea got up; I see it right-a-head,’ cried Tom. ‘We must go through it, however,’ said I; and so I tried to paddle the canoe through it. We very nearly got swamped; it was, you see, a waterfall and rapid, and higher up even our canoe could not have floated. We now agreed that go on shore we must, like it or not; I stepped out first, and then helped Tom, or in his fright he would have capsized the canoe. There we were both of us on firm ground for the first time since, as little boys, we left old England. I did feel strange, and when I tried to walk, I could scarcely get along.

“Tom rolled about as if he was drunk, hardly able to keep his feet. The rough ground hurt us, and we were every instant knocking our toes and shins against stumps and fallen branches. We both of us sat down ready to cry. ‘How shall we ever get along?’ asked Tom. ‘We shall get accustomed to it,’ I answered; ‘but it does make me feel very queer.’ We found a good supply of provisions in the canoe, and we loaded ourselves with as much as we could carry, and we then had the sense to lift our canoe out of the water, and to carry