"Ye-as," said Cap'n Jonah, rather relieved now that his confession was out. "The bald truth is, I ain't got no fortune. I did git some little money together at off times durin' my life; but allus something come up to scatter it. "Once I went into tradin' to the South Sea Islands with a feller, and we made quite a pile--twenty to twenty-five thousand silver dollars. We agreed that if either of us died, t'other should have the whole lot. "Wal, our schooner went ashore on an atoll and our crew was drowned, and we was both captured by a bunch of savages with their teeth filed to sharp p'ints. You know what that meant! "My partner seen me carried off, along with a big pot such as old-fashioned whalers used to try out blubber in, by one gang of savages, and he reckoned I was due to make the foundation for a cannibal goulash. But a missionary happened to land on the island where my gang of savages lived, and he saved my life." "Saved your life, Cap'n Jonah?" repeated the interested Eliphalet. "Yep," said Cap'n Jonah grimly. "He was fatter than me. So I was saved, and before I got fatted up to suit 'em, I got a chance to escape and I didn't refuse it. I landed in Hongkong the next year, just the day after my partner, sure I was dead, had blowed our fortune in at a gambling joint trying to break the bank. "Wal," sighed Cap'n Jonah, "that's where one fortune went. I'd get a little together and then lose it. Only last year I owned a tidy brig called the _Two Eyes_--named in compliment to the Chinese idea of havin' an eye painted on either side of the sprit. John Chinaman says: 'If junk no have eye, how can see?' She'd belonged to a Chinese company before I got her, and was named _The Beautiful Lily With Black Spots_. "Wal, the _Two Eyes'_ insurance ran out 'tween ports, she struck an uncharted reef, and in two hours I didn't own a thing but the duds I stood in and my instruments--ship and cargo both gone to the bottom." "And you haven't a thing to show for all your years of hard work, Cap'n Jonah?" asked Eliphalet Truitt, almost horror stricken. "I have a fine line of experience," said Cap'n Jonah with disgust. "I have the remains of my last year's airnings as skipper of the _Rajah's Mate_, in cash. And I have some sheers a feller sawed off onto me that I reckon ain't wuth much more'n that wall paper on your kitchen wall, Mr. Truitt. I invested two thousand dollars sev'ral years ago in them ile sheers, and then found the comp'ny had gone bust. All they ever got out'n the ile wells they bored, so they told me, was a bad smell!" "I want to know!" commented the ex-steward, vastly perturbed by Cap'n Jonah's story. "You can guess," went on the latter, "how much I got left out o' my money after payin' my fare home to the Cape. But I knowed another v'y'ge might put me on my beam ends. The rheumatics certainly have got their teeth set into me," and he rubbed his knees reflectively, swaying back and forth in Mr. Truitt's kitchen rocker.