Stranica 72 [72]
52 LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.
ladies talked to him, there was always laughter in the group of which
he was the center; when he played with the children, there was
always magnificent fun on hand. Among the sailors he had the
heartiest friends; he heard miraculous stories about pirates and ship¬
wrecks and desert islands; he learned to splice ropes and rig toy
ships, and gained an amount of information concerning "topsls and
‘“mains'ls,” quite surprising. His conversation had, indeed, quite a
nautical flavor at times, and on one occasion he raised a shout of
laughter ina group of ladies and gentlemen who were sitting on
deck, wrapped in shawls and overcoats, by saying sweetly, and with
a very engaging expression:
‘Shiver my timbers, but it s a cold day !”
It surprised him when they laughed. He had picked up this
sea-faring remark from an ‘elderly naval man” of the name of
Jerry, who told him stories in which it occurred frequently. To judge
from his stories of his own adventures, Jerry had made some two or
three thousand voyages, and had been invariably shipwrecked on
each occasion on an island densely populated with bloodthirsty canni¬
bals. Judging, also, by these same exciting adventures, he had been
partially roasted and eaten frequently and had been scalped some
fifteen or twenty times.
“That is why he is so bald,” explained Lord Fauntleroy to his
mamma. " After you have been scalped several times the hair never
grows again. Jerry's never grew again after that last time, when the
King of the Parromachaweekins did it with the knife made out of the
skull of the Chief of the Wopslemumpkies. He says it was one of the
most serious times he ever had. He was so frightened that his hair
stood right straight up when the king flourished his knife, and it never
would lie down, and the king wears it that way now, and it looks some¬
thing like a hair-brush. I never heard anything like the asperiences
Jerry has had! I should so like to tell Mr. Hobbs about them !”