Beadle's Dime Novels No. 94: The Mad Skipper — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MAD SKIPPER. CHAPTER I. THE DESERTERS. “Sprasn! splash! splash! Here he comes again—the rain ! The calaboose more better than this place. We got no tabae’ to smoke nor nothing to eat. Wish me back again in St. Mi- chael with piece of bread and one little baskeet of grapes !” The speaker, an odd-looking Portuguese dwarf with an enormous head, sat by the entrance of a small cave near the summit of a lofty bill overlooking the town and harbor of San Carlos, Chiloe island. Far beyond the town, which consists of little wooden buildings, few of them more than two stories in hight, and irregular streets rudely paved with rough stones, ig the short stretch of blue water separating the isle from the mainland (Chili) upon which towered the lofty, snow-covered peaks of the Andes, half buried in rolling clouds. The glances of the dwarf, however, were turned from these glorious moun- tains to rest upon the harbor, which at present contained but three vessels—two Peruvian schooners, and a large American whale-ship, painted yellow from stem to stern. “ Yees, yees,” continued the Portuguese, disconsolately, “ every thing been eat up dat we had, and me feel hungry ; poor Frank Harland hungry too,” he added, glancing toward a manly- looking young sailor who lay, @pparently asleep, in a corner of the cave—“ he hungry too, though he sleep so sound,” The large, round, black eyes of the dwarf, and his long ~ face, which was shaped something like that of a horse, softened as he spoke. He took off his jacket and carefully spread it over the shoulders of his companion to protect him from the drops of water falling from little fissures in the rocky roof. Frank, however, now sprung up with a gay laugh and patted . the little Portuguese upon the head. “You are a good friend, Joe, although something of a comlicloOolkkS.CcoOnn