There's nothing else but a lead-pencil and a kind of worked-out knife." I looked in the bag, however, and was well rewarded.
"Every man to his trade, captain," said I."You're a sailor, and you've given me plenty of points; but I am an artist, and allow me to inform you this is quite as strange as all the rest.

The knife is a palette-knife; the pencil a Winsor and Newton, and a B B B at that.
A palette-knife and a B B B on a tramp brig! It's against the laws of nature." "It would sicken a dog, wouldn't it ?" said Nares.
"Yes," I continued, "it's been used by an artist, too: see how it's sharpened--not for writing--no man could write with that.

An artist, and straight from Sydney?
How can he come in ?" "O, that's natural enough," sneered Nares.

"They cabled him to come up and illustrate this dime novel." We fell a while silent.
"Captain," I said at last, "there is something deuced underhand about this brig.

You tell me you've been to sea a good part of your life.