Twice before the final crash came did one of the crew speak words of cheer to the lad, who was unable to see what might be going on around him, and from the nature of such remarks he believed all hands felt certain the _Amazonia_ must strike the coast. That, in substance, was all the information Benny could give regarding such matters as must be embodied in the keeper’s report; but the men, curious to know how he chanced to be aboard the ship, plied him with questions, and when they had been answered the story of Benny Foster’s life was told. When quite young, he and his mother had sailed in the ship _West Wind_, of which his father was the captain, on what the lad believed was to be a long voyage; but he failed to remember the port to which the ship was bound. However, so far as concerned him, that was of no particular importance. At some time--Benny thought he might have been six years of age just then--his father was taken ill in the port of Calcutta, and it was necessary to provide a new master for the ship. Captain Foster and his family took lodgings ashore, and within a year Benny was both motherless and fatherless. From that time on he had been cared for in haphazard fashion by such acquaintances as his parents had formed, and he believed some efforts were made toward learning if he had any relatives in the United States. Whether anything was accomplished in that direction he could not say; but simply knew that in January of this same year Captain Clark sought him out for the purpose of carrying him to Boston, having learned of his condition from an American merchant in Calcutta. On board the _Amazonia_ he performed any light tasks which would have come within a cabin-boy’s line of duty; but was treated by Mrs. Clark as a friend rather than a servant, and so intimate an acquaintance had sprung up between himself and Fluff that he came to consider it his especial duty to care for the little Angora terrier, whose bright pink eyes gleaming out from amid the fluff of silken white hair gave him the appearance of being a remarkably intelligent animal. “And he’s just as bright as he looks,” Benny said, as he concluded the poor story of his own life, while he hugged the dog yet closer to his bosom. “Fluff knows almost everything I say to him, and what he don’t just understand he guesses at. Why, before we had been out a week, Mrs. Clark let him sleep with me in my berth, and when it was heavy weather this poor little fellow would almost the same as talk to me, scolding because the jumping of the ship made him feel badly. His name was Fluff Clark, of course; but now that he hasn’t got anybody in all this wide world but me, I’m going to adopt him, and he’ll be Fluff C. Foster after this.” “It strikes me there’s need of some one adopting you, lad,” Keeper Downey said with a grave smile. “I’m not certain but that Fluff is better able to care for himself than you are.”