" The _Aquidneck_
was a trim and tidy craft of 326 tons' register, hailing from Baltimore,
the port noted for clippers, and being herself high famed above them all
for swift sailing, she had won admiration on many seas.
Her crew mustered ten, all told; twelve had been the complement, when
freights were good. There were, beside the crew with regular stations, a
little lad, aged about six years, and his mamma (age immaterial),
privileged above the rest, having "all nights in"--that is, not having
to stand watch. The mate, Victor, who is to see many adventures before
reaching New York again, was born and bred on shipboard. He was in
perfect health, and as strong as a windlass. When he first saw the light
and began to give orders, he was at San Francisco on the packet
_Constitution_, the vessel lost in the tempest at Samoa, just before the
great naval disaster at the same place in the year of 1889. Garfield,
the little lad above mentioned, Victor's brother, in this family ship,
was born in Hong Kong harbour, in the old bark _Amethyst_, a bona-fide
American citizen, though first seeing the light in a foreign port, the
Stars and Stripes standing sponsors for his nationality.
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