"Well, there ain't any Pullmans running to this resort, so I stow away on a coal-burner, but somebody flags me. Then I try to hire out as a fisherman, but I ain't there with the gang talk and my stuff drags, so I fix it for a hide-away on _The Blessed Isle_--that's her name. Can you beat that for a monaker? This sailor of mine goes good to grub me, but he never shows for forty-eight hours--or years, I forget which. Anyhow, I stand it as long as I can, then I dig my way up to a hatch and mew like a house-cat. It seems they were hep from the start, and battened me down on purpose, then made book on how long I'd stay hid. Oh, it's a funny joke, and they all get a stomach laugh when I show. When I offer to pay my way they're insulted. Nix! that ain't their graft. They wouldn't take money from a stranger. Oh, no! They permit me to _work_ my way. The scullion has quit, see? So they promote me to his job. It's the only job I ever held, and I held it because it wouldn't let go of me, savvy? There's only three hundred men aboard _The Blessed Isle_, so all I have to do, regular, is to understudy the cooks, carry the grub, wait on table, wash the dishes, mop the floors, make the officers' beds, peel six bushels of potatoes a day, and do the laundry. Then, of course, there's some odd tasks. Oh, it was a swell job--more like a pastime. When a mop sees me coming now it dances a hornpipe, and I can't look a dish-rag in the face. All I see in my dreams is potato-parings and meat-rinds. I've got dish-water in my veins, and the whole universe looks greasy to me. Naturally it was my luck to pick the slowest ship in the harbor. We lay three weeks in the ice, that's all, and nobody worked but me and the sea-gulls." "You deserted this morning, eh?" "I did. I beat the barrier, and now I want a bath and some clean clothes and a whole lot of sleep. You don't need to disturb me till fall." He showed no interest whatever in the new plant, refusing even to look it over or to express an opinion upon the progress of the work; so they sent him out to the ship, where for days he remained in a toad-like lethargy, basking in the sun, sleeping three-fourths of the time and spending his waking hours in repeating the awful tale of his disgraceful peonage.