He hardly spent a
cent all the time he was on the beach, and the others said he was no
shipmate. He had been a petty officer on board the British frigate
Dublin, Capt. Lord James Townshend, and had great ideas of his own
importance. The man in charge of the Rosa's house was an Austrian by
birth, but spoke, read, and wrote four languages with ease and
correctness. German was his native tongue, but being born near the
borders of Italy, and having sailed out of Genoa, the Italian was
almost as familiar to him as his own language. He was six years on
board of an English man-of-war, where he learned to speak our language
with ease, and also to read and write it. He had been several years in
Spanish vessels, and had acquired that language so well, that he could
read any books in it. He was between forty and fifty years of age, and
was a singular mixture of the man-of-war's-man and Puritan. He
talked a great deal about propriety and steadiness, and gave good
advice to the youngsters and Kanakas, but seldom went up to the
town, without coming down "three sheets in the wind." One holyday,
he and old Robert (the Scotchman from the Catalina) went up to the
town, and got so cozy, talking over old stories and giving one another
good advice, that they came down double-backed, on a horse, and both
rolled off into the sand as soon as the horse stopped.
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