The fact is, I have noticed as we came along half your population dresses in all the colours of the rainbow--'fancy suitings' our tailors could call it at home--and this half of the census are undoubtedly men and women.

The rub is that the other half, to which you belong, all dress alike in YELLOW, and I will be fired from the biggest gun on the Carolina's main deck if I can tell what sex you belong to! I took you for a boy in the beginning, and the way you closed with the idea of having a drink with me seemed to show I was dead on the right course.

Then a little later on I heard you and a friend abusing our sex from an outside point of view in a way which was very disconcerting.

This, and some other things, have set me all abroad again, and as fate seems determined to make us chums for this voyage--why--well, frankly, I should be glad to know if you be boy or girl?
If you are as I am, no more nor less then--for I like you--there's my hand in comradeship.

If you are otherwise, as those sleek outlines seem to promise--why, here's my hand again! But man or woman you must be--come, which is it ?" If I had been perplexed before, to watch that boy now was more curious than ever.