"To Austrailly!" exclaimed Slag, leaning his arms on the mop with which he had been washing down the lifeboat. "Ay; I can't settle to work nohow since the dear old woman went away; so, as Nell is agreeable, and there's nothin' to keep me here, I've decided to up anchor and bear away for the southern seas." The bowman had seated himself on a cask while his friend was speaking, and gazed at him with a bewildered air. "Are 'ee in arnest, Bob?" "Ay, Joe, in dead earnest." "An' you say that you've nothin' to keep you here! What's this?" said Slag, laying his strong hand tenderly on the blue side of the boat. "Well, I'll be sorry to leave _her_, of course, an all my friends in Greyton, but friends will get along well enough without me, an' as for the boat, she'll never want a good coxswain while Joe Slag's alive an' well." "You're wrong there, mate," returned the bowman, quickly, while a look of decision overspread his bluff countenance, "there'll be both a noo cox'n and a noo bowman wanted for her before long, for as sure as the first goes away the tother follers." "Nonsense, Joe; you're jokin' now." "Yes, I'm jokin' if _you're_ jokin'; otherwise, I'm in dead arnest too-- in as dead arnest as yourself, if not deader. Wasn't you an' me born on the same day, Bob? Didn't our mothers crow over us cheek by jowl when we was babbies? Haven't we rollicked together on the shore ever since we was the height of our daddies' boots, an' gone fishin' in company, fair weather an' foul, to the present hour, to say nothin' o' the times we've lent a hand to rescue men an' women an' child'n i' the lifeboat? No, no, Bob Massey! if you lay yer course for Austrailly, Joseph Slag follers, as sure as a gun." Finding that his comrade was in downright earnest, and possessed of a will as inflexible as his own, Bob made no effort to dissuade him from his purpose. On the contrary, he approved of the determination, for he was pleased at the unexpected demonstration of affection which his announcement had called forth in one who was by nature undemonstrative, and who, having thus given vent to his aroused feelings, quickly resumed the reserve from which he had been so suddenly drawn out. Massey, therefore, shook hands with him, by way of sealing an unspoken compact of eternal friendship, and suggested that they should proceed together to the office of an emigration agent, who had recently made his appearance in the village. In the office they found a very small boy, with an air of self-possession that would have been suitable in his grandfather. "Is the agent in?" asked the coxswain. "Yes, but engaged. Sit down; he'll attend to you directly." The lifeboat men obeyed, almost sheepishly, the one speculating as to whether highly developed precocity was not almost criminal, the other wondering how such a boy would look and act if obliged to undergo the process of being rescued--say by the hair of his head--from a wreck.