“I hardly know myself. Yesterday morning I belonged to the trawler _Ibis_ of Boston. Just before daylight, while half the crew, and I among them, were on deck, we were run down by a large square-rigger scudding under bare poles. It was so dark that we did not see her until she was right on top of us, and then, though we cut the cable, it was too late. She struck us before those below could get on deck, and crushed the schooner down as though she were a herring-box. Then I’ve no knowledge of what happened to the others, or even to myself. I only know that I was under water such a long time that I wonder I did not stay there. When I came up something was floating close beside me, and I got hold of it. The rest is a blank. The next thing I knew, I was lying in a bunk and somebody was trying to pour something down my throat. Your skipper was just telling me what a splendid fight you made to get me, and how near you came to losing the number of your mess, and sending your vessel home with her flag at half-mast in doing it. I’m awfully grateful, and I hope some time I may be able to prove it; for I’ve been a pretty bad lot, and was not ready to go up aloft yet.” “No,” said Breeze, soberly, “I don’t suppose many of us are.” Then he asked, “Are you an American?” The other’s name, and a foreign accent to his speech, led to the question. “Not yet,” answered Wolfe, smiling, "but I hope to be in two years more when I come of age. At present I am an Irishman. That is, my father is Irish, my mother is English, and I was born in England, but brought up in Queenstown, Ireland, where my parents live, and from which I ran away to sea about a year ago. Before they were married, my father was butler and my mother lady’s-maid in the household of Sir Wolfe Tresmont. That’s where I got my first name. My father is now a linen-draper in Queenstown, where his best customers are Americans. I was sent to school in England for four years, but I hated it, and from seeing and hearing so much of Americans, I had a great desire to come to this country. Last year my father took me from school and set me to work in his shop. I hated that worse than school, and seeing a chance to run away and ship on board a bark bound for Boston, I took it and came over here. “By the time I got on this side I had had enough of merchant sailing; and, as I could not find anything else to do, thought I would try fishing. Since then I have made two trips, one of four months to the Newfoundland Banks, and one to George’s before this one. Now here I am, and you know more about me than I have told to another living soul since leaving home.”