"I sha'n't ever forget the time I was a boy in the old _Mary Bedloe_ brig, out o' Boston, loaded with sundries for Jamaica, to bring back molasses--and something a leetle mite stronger. That's 'bout as near as I ever got to having traffic with liquor--and 'twas an unlucky v'y'ge all the way through. "Before we ever got the rum aboard," pursued Cap'n Amazon, "on our way down there, our water went bad. Yes, sir! Water does get stringy sometimes on long v'y'ges. It useter on whalin' cruises--get all stringy and bad; but after she'd worked clear she'd be fit to drink again. "But this time in the _Mary Bedloe_ it was something mysterious happened to the drinking water. Made the hull crew sick. Cap'n Jim Braman was master. He was a good navigator, but an awful profane man. Swore without no reason to it. "Well----Where was I? Oh, yes! We had light airs in the Caribbean for once, and didn't make no more headway in a day than a brick barge goin' upstream. We come to an island--something more than a key--and Cap'n Braman ordered a boat's crew ashore for water. I was in the second's boat so I went. We found good water easy and the second officer, who was a nice young chap, let us scour around on our own hook for fruit and such, after we'd filled the barrels. "I was all for shellfish them days, and I see some big mussels attached to the rocks, it bein' low water. Some o' them mussels, when ye gut 'em same as ye would deep-sea clams, make the nicest fry you ever tasted. "Wal," said Cap'n Amazon, walking sedately home from church with his amused niece on his arm, "I wanted a few of them mussels. There was a mud bottom and so the water was black. Just as I reached for the first mussel I felt something creeping around my left leg. I thought it was eel-grass; then I thought it was an eel. "Next thing I knowed it took holt like a leech in half a dozen places. I jumped; but I didn't jump far. There was two o' the things had me, and that left leg o' mine was fast as a duck's foot in the mud!" "Oh, Uncle Amazon!" gasped Louise. "Yep. A third arm whipped out o' the water had helt me round the waist tighter'n any girl of my acquaintance ever lashed her best feller. Land sakes, that devilfish certainly give me a hi-mighty hug! "But I had what they call down in the Spanish speakin' islands a machette--a big knife for cuttin' your way through the jungle. I hauled that out o' the waistband of my pants and I began slicing at them snake-like arms of the critter and yelling like all get-out. "More scare't than hurt, I reckon. I was a young feller, as I tell you, and hadn't seen so much of the world as I have since," continued Cap'n Amazon. "But the arms seemed fairly to grow on that devilfish. I wasn't hacked loose when the second officer come runnin' with his gun. I dragged the critter nearer inshore and he got a look at it. Both barrels went into that devilfish, and that was more than it could stomach; so it let go," finished the captain.