Fitly, indeed, was he named, as the secrets of his early wild career--confessed freely to his noble young friends--plainly showed. A slaver at the age of seventeen, the ringleader of a mutiny on the African Coast at the age of twenty, a privateersman during the last war with England, the commander of a fire-ship and its sole survivor at twenty-five, with a wild intermediate career of unmixed piracy, until the Rebellion called him to civil service again as a blockade-runner, and peace and a desire for rural repose led him to seek the janitorship of the Doemville Academy, where no questions were asked and references not exchanged: he was, indeed, a fit mentor for our daring youth. Although a man whose days had exceeded the usual space allotted to humanity, the various episodes of his career footing his age up to nearly one hundred and fifty-nine years, he scarcely looked it, and was still hale and vigorous. "Yes," continued Pirate Jim, critically, "I don't think he was any bigger nor you, Master Chitterlings, if as big, when he stood on the fork'stle of my ship, and shot the captain o' that East Injymen dead. We used to call him little Weevils, he was so young-like. But, bless your hearts, boys! he wa'n't anything to little Sammy Barlow, ez once crep' up inter the captain's stateroom on a Rooshin frigate, stabbed him to the heart with a jack-knife, then put on the captain's uniform and his cocked hat, took command of the ship and fout her hisself." "Wasn't the captain's clothes big for him?" asked B. Franklin Jenkins, anxiously. The janitor eyed young Jenkins with pained dignity. "Didn't I say the Rooshin captain was a small, a very small man? Rooshins is small, likewise Greeks." A noble enthusiasm beamed in the faces of the youthful heroes. "Was Barlow as large as me?" asked C. F. Hall Golightly, lifting his curls from his Jove-like brow. "Yes; but then he hed hed, so to speak, experiences. It was allowed that he had pizened his schoolmaster afore he went to sea. But it's dry talking, boys." Golightly drew a flask from his jacket and handed it to the janitor. It was his father's best brandy. The heart of the honest old seaman was touched. "Bless ye, my own pirate boy!" he said, in a voice suffocating with emotion. "I've got some tobacco," said the youthful Jenkins, "but it's fine-cut; I use only that now." "I kin buy some plug at the corner grocery," said Pirate Jim, "only I left my port-money at home." "Take this watch," said young Golightly; "it is my father's. Since he became a tyrant and usurper, and forced me to join a corsair's band, I've began by dividing the property."