This
was the most hopeful tale of emigration that I heard from first to
last; and as you see, the luck was for stowaways.
My curiosity was much inflamed by what I heard; and the next morning,
as I was making the round of the ship, I was delighted to find the
ex-Royal Engineer engaged in washing down the white paint of a deck
house. There was another fellow at work beside him, a lad not more
than twenty, in the most miraculous tatters, his handsome face sown
with grains of beauty and lighted up by expressive eyes. Four
stowaways had been found aboard our ship before she left the Clyde,
but these two had alone escaped the ignominy of being put ashore.
Alick, my acquaintance of last night, was Scots by birth, and by
trade a practical engineer; the other was from Devonshire, and had
been to sea before the mast. Two people more unlike by training,
character, and habits it would be hard to imagine; yet here they were
together, scrubbing paint.
Alick had held all sorts of good situations, and wasted many
opportunities in life. I have heard him end a story with these
words: 'That was in my golden days, when I used finger-glasses.
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