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“Patience,” said he; “it is a reasonable objection, but as a rule I do not like to be interrupted when I am telling a story. Five thousand serons of cocoa—” he repeated.

“Pray,” said I, forgetting that he did not like to be interrupted, “what is a seron?”

“A seron is a crate.”

“Well, sir?”

“Sixty arobes of alpaca wool——”

“What is an arobe?”

“An arobe is twenty-five pounds.” He continued to read: “One thousand quintals of tin at one hundred pounds per quintal; four casks of tortoiseshell, eight thousand hides in the hair, four thousand tanned hides, and a quantity of cedar planks.”

He now looked at me as though he expected me to speak. I addressed him as follows: “What I am listening to is a very interesting story. It is an adventure, and I love adventures. It is said that the charm of the sailor’s life lies in its being made up of adventures. That is a lie. Men pass many years at sea and meet with no adventures worth speaking of. A sailors life is a very mechanical, monotonous routine.”