Section 227 A Touching Scene at Sea. I.
Two weeks ago1 on board an English steamer, a little ragged boy, aged nine years, was discovered on the fourth day of the voyage out from Liverpool to New York, and carried before the first mate, whose duty it was to deal with such cases. When questioned as to his object in being stowed away2, and who brought him on board, the boy, who had a beautiful sunny face, and eyes that looked like the very mirrors of truth, replied that his stepfather did it, because he could not afford3 to keep him, nor to pay his passage out to Halifax, where he had an aunt who4 was well off, and to whose house he was going. The mate did not believe the story, in spite of the winning face and truthful5 accents of the boy. He had seen too much of stow-aways6 to be easily deceived by them, he said; and it was his firm conviction that the boy had been brought on board and provided with food by the sailors. The little fellow was very roughly handled in consequence. Day by day he was questioned and re-questioned, but always with the same result. He did not know a sailor on board, and his father alone had secreted him, and given him the food which he ate. At7 last the mate, wearied by the boy’s persistence in the same story, and perhaps a little anxious to inculpate the sailors, seized him one day by the collar, and dragging him to the fore8, told him that (S. 211, N. 9) unless he would tell the truth in ten minutes from that time, he would hang him from the yard-arm.
Notes
1 Vor vierzehn Tagen, after which place predicate and subject [one discovered], since, as a rule, only one part of the adjuncts to the predicate should be placed before it.
2 as — away = warum er aufs Schiff geschmuggelt sei (App. §§ 28 and 30).
3 I cannot afford to keep you, meine Mittel gestatten mir nicht, dich zu ernähren.
4 The relative clause ‘who — off’ may be avoided by using the adjective ‘wohlhabend’ before ‘aunt’.
5 here glaubwürdig; accents, Sprache.
6 ‘the stow-away’ may perhaps be rendered by der Eingeschmuggelte.
7 It will easily be seen that, on account of the length of this period and of the many dependent clauses contained therein, it requires an altogether different form of construction in German. The author will, however, refrain from indicating the form to be used, the student being by this time expected to have attained sufficient skill and practice for dealing with such cases.
8 aufs Vorderteil des Schiffes.