CHAPTER NINE.
OLD CALABAR COTTAGE.
I don't know why, excepting that the words had a kindly ring about them, in spite of the almost brusque quaintness of the address, that touched me keenly in the depressed state of mind in which I was; but, instead of answering the speaker's pertinent question as to the reason of my grief, I now bent down my head again on my arm, sobbing away as if my heart would break.
But this only made the good Samaritan prosecute his inquiry further.
"Come, come, stow that, youngster," said he, taking a seat beside me on the bench, where I was curled up in one corner, placing one of his hands gently on my shoulder in a caressing way.

"Look up, and tell me what ails you, my lad, and if Sam Pengelly can help you, why, there's his fist on it!" "You--you--are very k-kind," I stammered out between my long-drawn sobs; "but--but--no--nobody can--help me, sir." "Oh, nonsense, tell that to the marines, for a sailor won't believe you," he replied, briskly.

"Why, laddie, anybody can help anybody, the same as the mouse nibbled the lion out of the hunter's net; and, as for Mr Nobody, I don't know the man! Look here, I can't bear to see a ship in distress, or a comrade in the doldrums; so I tell you what, young cockbird, raise your crest and don't look so peaky, for I'm going to help you if it's in my power, as most likely it is--that is, saving as how it ain't a loss by death, which takes us all, and which the good Lord above can only soothe, bringing comfort to you; and even then, why, a friendly word, and a grip o' some un's hand, sometimes softens down the roughest plank we've got to tread.
"I tell you, my hearty," he resumed again, after a brief pause, during which my sobs ceased, "I ain't a going to let you adrift, now I've borne down alongside and boarded you, my hearty--that's not Sam Pengelly's way; so you'd better make a clean breast of your troubles and we'll see what can be done for 'em.

To begin with, for there's no use argufying on an empty stomach, are you hungry, eh ?" "No," I said with a smile, his cheery address and quaint language banishing my melancholy feelings in a moment, just as a ray of sunshine or two, penetrating the surface mist, that hangs over the sea and land of a summer morning before the orb of day, causes it to melt away and disappear as if by magic, waking up the scene to life; "I had breakfast in the town about an hour ago." "Are you hard up ?" was his next query.
"No," I answered again, this time bursting into a laugh at the puzzled expression on his face; "I've got a shilling and a sixpence--there!" and I drew the coins from my pocket, showing them to him.
"Well, I'm jiggered!" murmured the old fellow to himself, taking off the straight-peaked blue cloth cap he wore, and scratching his head reflectively--as if in a quandary, and cogitating how best to get out of it.

"Neither hard up or hungry! I call this a stiff reckoning to work out.