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- 4406
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4346
- text
- feet high, an English lad, who, when we were about forty-eight hours
from New York, suddenly appeared on deck, asking for something to eat.
It seems he was the son of a carpenter, a widower, with this only
child, who had gone out to America in the Highlander some six months
previous, where he fell to drinking, and soon died, leaving the boy a
friendless orphan in a foreign land.
For several weeks the boy wandered about the wharves, picking up a
precarious livelihood by sucking molasses out of the casks discharged
from West India ships, and occasionally regaling himself upon stray
oranges and lemons found floating in the docks. He passed his nights
sometimes in a stall in the markets, sometimes in an empty hogshead on
the piers, sometimes in a doorway, and once in the watchhouse, from
which he escaped the next morning, running as he told me, right between
the doorkeeper’s legs, when he was taking another vagrant to task for
repeatedly throwing himself upon the public charities.
At last, while straying along the docks, he chanced to catch sight of
the Highlander, and immediately recognized her as the very ship which
brought him and his father out from England. He at once resolved to
return in her; and, accosting the captain, stated his case, and begged
a passage. The captain refused to give it; but, nothing daunted, the
heroic little fellow resolved to conceal himself on board previous to
the ship’s sailing; which he did, stowing himself away in the
_between-decks;_ and moreover, as he told us, in a narrow space between
two large casks of water, from which he now and then thrust out his
head for air. And once a steerage passenger rose in the night and poked
in and rattled about a stick where he was, thinking him an uncommon
large rat, who was after stealing a passage across the Atlantic. There
are plenty of passengers of that kind continually plying between
Liverpool and New York.
As soon as he divulged the fact of his being on board, which he took
care should not happen till he thought the ship must be out of sight of
land; the captain had him called aft, and after giving him a thorough
shaking, and threatening to toss him overboard as a tit-bit for _John
Shark,_ he told the mate to send him forward among the sailors, and let
him live there. The sailors received him with open arms; but before
caressing him much, they gave him a thorough washing in the
lee-scuppers, when he turned out to be quite a handsome lad, though
thin and pale with the hardships he had suffered. However, by good
nursing and plenty to eat, he soon improved and grew fat; and before
many days was as fine a looking little fellow, as you might pick out of
Queen Victoria’s nursery. The sailors took the warmest interest in him.
One made him a little hat with a long ribbon; another a little jacket;
a third a comical little pair of man-of-war’s-man’s trowsers; so that
in the end, he looked like a juvenile boatswain’s mate. Then the cook
furnished him with a little tin pot and pan; and the steward made him a
present of a pewter tea-spoon; and a steerage passenger gave him a jack
knife. And thus provided, he used to sit at meal times half way up on
the forecastle ladder, making a great racket with his pot and pan, and
merry as a cricket. He was an uncommonly fine, cheerful, clever, arch
little fellow, only six years old, and it was a thousand pities that he
should be abandoned, as he was. Who can say, whether he is fated to be
a convict in New South Wales, or a member of Parliament for Liverpool?
When we got to that port, by the way, a purse was made up for him; the
captain, officers, and the mysterious cabin passenger contributing
their best wishes, and the sailors and poor steerage passengers
something like fifteen dollars in cash and tobacco. But I had almost
forgot to add that the daughter of the dock-master gave him a fine lace
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