Thomas Jefferson Brown | Page 2

a street corner,
and offered him a job at fifty a week if he'd sign a contract for a dozen
weeks.

"Good Lord," said Thomas Jefferson, "I wouldn't know what to do with
six hundred dollars!"
The next week he was cooking in a lumber-camp for his board. That's
Thomas Jefferson--or, rather, that's what he was.
And now we're coming to the girl who killed the bug in Thomas
Jefferson--and rescued the king. She was born swell. She has blue
eyes--the sort that can light up a dark day, and can make your head turn
dizzy when they smile at you. And she's got the right sort of hair to go
with 'em--red and gold and brown all mixed up, until you can't tell
which is which; the sort that makes you wonder if some big artist hasn't
been painting a picture for you, when you see it out in the sunshine.
She comes of a titled family, but she'd want to die to-morrow if
Thomas Jefferson Brown didn't worship her from the tips of her little
toes to the top of her pretty head. She thinks he's a king. And he is--one
of those great, big, healthy kings that nature sometimes grows when it
has half a chance.

II
It's curious how the whole thing happened. Thomas Jefferson wandered
up to Portland at the time we were fitting out a ship for a whaling
cruise. We saw him imitating a banjo for a lot of kids down on the
wharf, and the minute our eyes lit on him--Tucker's and mine--we liked
him. It isn't necessary to go into the details of what happened after that.
Just a week later, when Thomas Jefferson and I were shaking hands for
the last time, a queer sort of look came into his eyes, and he said:
"Bobby, you're the first man I ever knew that makes me feel like crying
when you leave me."
He said it just like one of the kids he'd tickled half to death on the
wharf. There was a little jerking in his throat, and there came into his
face a look so gentle that it made me think of a girl.

"Why don't you come along on this cruise with me?" I said.
Thomas Jefferson gave a sudden start, and a queer expression came
into his eyes, as if he saw something out on the sea that had startled
him. Then he laughed. You could hear that laugh of Thomas Jefferson's
three blocks away, and sunshine in winter couldn't bring more cheer
than the sound of it. He looked at me for a moment, and then said:
"Bobby, I'll go!"
It wasn't forty-eight hours before Thomas Jefferson had a first
mortgage on every soul aboard the "Sleeping Sealer," from the cap'n to
the oiler down in the engine-room. He was able, all right, but you
couldn't have made an able seaman out of him in a hundred years. For
all that, he did the work of three men. The first thing you heard when
you woke up in the morning was his whistle, and the last thing you
heard at night was his laugh or his song. He did everything, from
cooking to telling us why Germany couldn't lick England, and how the
United States could clean up the map of the earth if Congress would
spend less money on job-making bureaus and a little more on
war-ships.
Then we discovered what was in the old alligator-skin valise he carried.
It was books. Half the time he didn't have to read to us, but just talked
off the stuff he'd learned by heart. We got to know a lot before the trip
was half begun, just by associating with Thomas Jefferson Brown--or
Thomas Jefferson, as he was then.
We spent three months up about the Spicer Islands, and then came
down toward Southampton Land. Thomas Jefferson was the happiest
man aboard until we caught sight of a coast, and then the change began.
After that he'd get restless whenever land hove in sight.
Six weeks later we came down into Roes Welcome Sound, planning to
get out through Hudson Strait before winter set in. The fact that we
were almost homeward bound didn't seem to affect Thomas Jefferson. I
saw the beginning of the end when he said to me one day:

"Bobby, I've never seen this northern country. It's a big, glorious
country, and I'd like to go ashore."
There wasn't any use arguing with him. The cap'n tried it, we all tried it,
and at last Thomas Jefferson prepared to take his leave of us at Point
Fullerton, just eight hundred miles north of civilization, where there's
an Eskimo village and a police station of the Royal Northwest Mounted.
He came to me the day before