University of Virginia Library

9. IX.

Now Nicodemus, or, as they familiarly called
him “Old Nick,” was a wonderfully 'cute personage;
and as he was rather slack of hands — was
not much of a penman or grammarian, and felt
that in his new trade he should need greatly the
assistance of one to whom the awful school mystery

of fractions and the rule of three had, by a
kind fortune, been developed duly — he regarded
the impression which he had obviously made upon
the mind of Ned Johnson, as promising to neutralize,
if he could secure him, some few of his
own deficiencies. To this end, therefore, he particularly
addressed himself, and, as might be suspected,
under the circumstances, he was eminently
successful. The head of the youth was soon
stuffed full of the wonders of the sea; and after a
day or two of talk, all round the subject, in which
time, by the way, the captain sold off all his “notions,”
he came point blank to the subject in the
little cabin of the schooner. Doolittle sat over
against him with a pile of papers before him,
some of which, to the uneducated down-easter, were
grievous mysteries, calling for a degree of arithmetical
knowledge which was rather beyond his
capacity. His sales and profits — his accounts
with creditors and debtors — were to be registered,
and these required him to reconcile the provoking
cross currencies of the different states — the York
shilling, the Pennsylvania levy, the Georgia
thrip, the pickayune of Louisiana, the Carolina
fourpence — and this matter was, alone, enough
to bother him. He knew well enough how to
count the coppers on hearing them. No man
was more expert at that. But the difficulty of
bringing them into one currency on paper, called
for a more experienced accountant than our worthy
captain; and the youth wondered to behold
the ease with which so great a person could be
bothered. Doolittle scratched his head in vain.
He crossed his right leg over his left, but still he
failed to prove his sum. He reversed the movement,
and the left now lay problematically of the
right. The product was very hard to find. He
took a sup of cider, and then he thought things
began to look a little clearer; but a moment after
all was cloud again, and at length the figures
absolutely seemed to run into one another. He
could stand it no longer, and slapped his hand
down, at length, with such emphasis upon the
table, as to startle the poor youth, who, all the
while, had been dreaming of plunging and wriggling
dolphins, seen in all their gold and glitter,
three feet or less in the waters below the advancing
prow of the ship. The start which Johnson made,
at once showed the best mode to the captain of
extrication from his difficulty.

“There — there, my dear boy, — take some
cider — only a little — do you good — best thing
in the world — There, — and now do run up these
figures, and see how we agree.”

Ned was a clever led, and used to stand head

of his class. He unravelled the mystery in little
time — reconciled the cross-currency of the several
sovereign states, and was rewarded by his patron
with a hearty slap upon the shoulder, and
another cup of cider. It was not difficult after
this to agree, and half fearing that all the while
he was not doing right by Mary Jones, he dashed
his signature, in a much worse hand than he was
accustomed to write, upon a printed paper which
Doolittle thrust to him across the table.

“And now, my dear boy,” said the captain,
“you are my secretary, and shall have best berth,
and place along with myself, in the `Smashing
Nancy.”'