In order to prove that he was by no means cast down, as well as to lighten the tedium of his confinement, Jo entertained himself by singing snatches of sea songs; such as, "My tight little craft,"-- "A life on the stormy sea,"-- "Oh for a draught of the howling blast!" etc.; all of which he delivered in a bass voice so powerful that it caused the rafters of the widow's cottage to ring again.
These melodious, not to say thunderous, sounds also caused the ears of a small native youth to tingle with curiosity.

This urchin crept on his brown little knees under the window of Bumpus's apartment, got on his brown and dirty little tip-toes, placed his brown little hands on the sill, hauled his brown and half-naked little body up by sheer force of muscle, and peeped into the room with his large and staring brown eyes, the whites of which were displayed to their full extent.
Jo was in the middle of an enthusiastic "Oh!" when the urchin's head appeared.

Instead of expressing his passionate desire for a "draught of the howling blast," he prolonged the "Oh!" into a hideous yell, and thrust his blazing face close to the window so suddenly that the boy let go his hold, fell backwards, and rolled head over heels into a ditch, out of which he scrambled with violent haste, and ran with the utmost possible precipitancy to his native home on the sea-shore.
Here he related what he had seen to his father.

The father went and looked in upon Jo's solitude.

He happened to have seen Bumpus during the great fight, and knew him to be one of the pirates.