“I’m coming to that now,” he replied, “if you’ll just give a man time to get his bearings,” and he reached into his pocket and drew forth an enormous piece of plug tobacco. He bit off a couple of ounces and began to manipulate the quid so as to get it securely stowed in his cheek while he replaced the remainder of the plug in his pocket. He then drew a long breath, as if about to begin his yarn, and squirted a huge mouthful of tobacco juice on to the clean white deck. “You see, when I married--” “Here, Bill, get a swab an’ wipe up th’ dirty mess,” cried O’Toole to a sailor. “This ain’t no bloody Johnnie Bull, an’ we don’t make no pig-pen av the main-deck. But go ahead, messmate; there’s a swab for ye, an’ ye can take snap shots at it betwixt breaths. Leave it lay, Bill.” Garnett scowled at the sailor, who dropped the swab; then, taking no further notice of the interruption, he began. CHAPTER XI. “As I was saying, when I married and settled down amongst the hills to the east’ard o’ the Sacramento, I thought I’d about served my time on deep water and had come on the beach for good. You see, I married old man White’s daughter--he was a brother to Skipper White, what sailed that race with old man Gore around the Cape--and, as the gal was young and had helped keep house for the old man, I reckoned we’d get along first-rate. But there was bad blood in that White family. The old man had run a boarding-house down by the St. Joe Mission, and he was a bad man. His wife’s brother, Skipper Anderson, had done some queer things, and had got a hard name on the West Coast long ago, when I was with him. So, you see, there was bad blood in the family. “After I had married and bought a little farm, I just settled down, peaceful like, and waited for the family to increase and multiply. You can bet I was some astonished one day, about two months afterward, when I found the family had increased and multiplied all of a sudden like. “So I went to the fellow what sold me this vial--which cures most things in the head--and he told me there was no accounting for the strange and curious things what happen along in the course o’ nature. At first, though, he began on science, and told me there was no explanation unless I could follow him through a lot o’ stuff what was writ in a book in a foreign language. He had just about convinced me that all was right when he began on the course o’ nature. “I ain’t much when it’s a question of science or foreign languages, but I’m way up as high as a skysail truck when it comes down to the course o’ nature. So I told him I guessed it was a family affair, and that I wouldn’t be missed much if I left the valley. “He grinned some, and told me I was a suspicious old duffer, and I smashed a bottle of castor-oil over his figgerhead, and started for ’Frisco.