'That?' said Mackay. 'Why, that's one of the stowaways.'
'No man,' said the same authority, 'who has had anything to do with
the sea, would ever think of paying for a passage.' I give the
statement as Mackay's, without endorsement; yet I am tempted to
believe that it contains a grain of truth; and if you add that the
man shall be impudent and thievish, or else dead-broke, it may even
pass for a fair representation of the facts. We gentlemen of England
who live at home at ease have, I suspect, very insufficient ideas on
the subject. All the world over, people are stowing away in coal-
holes and dark corners, and when ships are once out to sea, appearing
again, begrimed and bashful, upon deck. The career of these sea-
tramps partakes largely of the adventurous. They may be poisoned by
coal-gas, or die by starvation in their place of concealment; or when
found they may be clapped at once and ignominiously into irons, thus
to be carried to their promised land, the port of destination, and
alas! brought back in the same way to that from which they started,
and there delivered over to the magistrates and the seclusion of a
county jail.
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