I was boy when I was twelve, on the _Herald o' the Morn_, when she made around in ninety-nine days--half the crew in irons most o' the time, five men lost from aloft off the Horn, the points of our sheath-knives broken square off, knuckle-dusters an' belayin'-pins flyin', three men shot by the officers in one day, the second mate killed dead an' no one to know who done it, an' drive! drive! drive! ninety-nine days from land to land, a run of seventeen thousand miles, an' east to west around Cape Stiff!" "But that would make you sixty-nine years old," I insisted.
"Which I am," he retorted proudly, "an' a better man at that than the scrubby younglings of these days.

A generation of 'em would die under the things I've been through.

Did you ever hear of the _Sunny South_ ?--she that was sold in Havana to run slaves an' changed her name to _Emanuela_ ?" "And you've sailed the Middle Passage!" I cried, recollecting the old phrase.
"I was on the _Emanuela_ that day in Mozambique Channel when the _Brisk_ caught us with nine hundred slaves between-decks.

Only she wouldn't a- caught us except for her having steam." I continued to stroll up and down beside this massive relic of the past, and to listen to his hints and muttered reminiscences of old man-killing and man-driving days.

He was too real to be true, and yet, as I studied his shoulder-stoop and the age-drag of his huge feet, I was convinced that his years were as he asserted.