"It's different with you; but I'm only a stowaway, an' stand a good show of gettin' into a heap of trouble when the officers of this ship find out that I've no business to be here."
"I don't figger that way," Bill Jones replied, with a light and airy manner. "It doesn't stand to reason you should have been left aboard to go down with the steamer, eh?"
"An' had a precious good job doin' it. Look ye, Teddy Dunlap, are you countin' yourself of so much importance that a battle-ship is to leave her station for no other reason than to put you ashore?"
"I didn't mean it that way. You see they ought to do somethin' with me--"
"Then wait till they get ready, an' don't borrow trouble. This crossin' of bridges before you come to 'em is likely to make life mighty hard for a young chap like yourself, an' considerin' all you've told me, I wonder at it."
Teddy could say nothing more. It surely seemed reasonable Bill Jones knew what it was proper he should do, and from that moment he resolved to "take things easy," as his friend advised, rather than fret over what couldn't be mended.
Therefore it was he ceased to worry, although at the same time keeping a sharp watch over the _Brooklyn_, and by such a course saw very much of what happened off Santiago during those months of June and July, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight.
Surely the stowaway had no cause to complain of his treatment by the crew of the _Texas_.
Every man did his best to make these waifs from the doomed steamer feel perfectly at home, and when Bill Jones brought his sea-chest aboard, as he did the day following their abandonment of the _Merrimac_, there was not a man on the battle-ship who did not suppose Teddy's dunnage was in the same capacious receptacle.
Rations were served to the stowaway the same as to any member of the crew, and then he and Bill Jones were called upon for some trifling duty, but as the latter said, there was no more work than was good for them by way of exercise.
In the most pleasant fashion possible the time passed until the _Merrimac_ was made ready for her doom, and these two comrades, for it can well be supposed they were become fast friends, saw all the preparations without being obliged to do any of the disagreeable work.