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                        CHARLIE CODMAN'S CRUISE

                           A Story for Boys


                         BY HORATIO ALGER, JR.

            AUTHOR OF "FRANK'S CAMPAIGN," "ERIE TRAIN BOY,"
                   "ADRIFT IN NEW YORK," ETC., ETC.


                               NEW YORK
                            HURST & COMPANY
                              PUBLISHERS




                               PREFACE.


In deference to the expressed wishes of some of his young friends,
the author has essayed a story of the sea, and now presents "Charlie
Codman's Cruise," as the third volume of the Campaign Series. It will
be found more adventurous than its predecessors, and the trials which
Charlie is called upon to encounter are of a severer character than
befell Frank Frost or Paul Prescott. But it will be found that they
were met with the same manly spirit, and a like determination to be
faithful to duty at all hazards.

Though not wholly a stranger to the sea, the author is quite aware of
the blunders to which a landsman is exposed in treating of matters and
a mode of life which, at the best, he must comprehend but imperfectly,
and has endeavored to avoid, as far as possible, professional
technicalities, as not essential to the interest of the story.

With these few words he submits the present volume to his young
readers, hoping for it a welcome even more generous than has been
accorded to "Frank's Campaign" and "Paul Prescott's Charge."




                       CHARLIE CODMAN'S CRUISE.




                                  I.

                        CHARLIE AND THE MISER.


Charlie Codman turned out of Washington into Bedford Street just as the
clock in the Old South steeple struck two. He was about fourteen, a
handsome, well-made boy, with a bright eye and a manly expression. But
he was poor. That was evident enough from his clothes, which, though
neat and free from dust, were patched in several places. He had a small
roll of daily papers under his arm, the remains of his stock in trade,
which he had been unable wholly to dispose of.

Some of my readers may know that the Latin School and English High
School are kept in the same building. At two o'clock both are
dismissed. Charlie had scarcely passed the school-house when a crowd
of boys issued from the school-yard, and he heard his name called from
behind. Looking back he recognized a boy somewhat smaller than himself,
with whom he had formed an acquaintance some time before.

"Where are you bound, Charlie?" asked Edwin Banks.

"I'm going home now."

"What luck have you had this morning?"

"Not much. I've got four papers left over, and that will take away
about all my profits."

"What a pity you are poor, Charlie. I wish you could come to school
with us."

"So do I, Eddie. I'd give a good deal to get an education, but I feel
that I ought to help mother."

"Why won't you come some time, and see us, Charlie? Clare and myself
would be very glad to see you at any time."

"I should like to go," said Charlie, "but I don't look fit."

"Oh, never mind about your clothes. I like you just as well as if you
were dressed in style."

"Perhaps I'll come some time," said Charlie. "I'd invite you to come
and see me, but we live in a poor place."

"Just as if I should care for that. I will come whenever I get an
invitation."

"Then come next Saturday afternoon. I will be waiting for you as you
come out of school."

Charlie little thought where he would be when Saturday came.

Shortly after the boys separated, and Charlie's attention was arrested
by the sight of an old man with a shambling gait, who was bending
over and anxiously searching for something on the sidewalk. Charlie
recognized him at once as "old Manson, the miser," for this was the
name by which he generally went.

Old Peter Manson was not more than fifty-five, but he looked from
fifteen to twenty years older. If his body had been properly cared
for, it would have been different; but, one by one, its functions had
been blunted and destroyed, and it had become old and out of repair.
Peter's face was ploughed with wrinkles. His cheeks were thin, and the
skin was yellow and hung in folds. His beard appeared to have received
little or no attention for a week, at least, and was now stiff and
bristling.

The miser's dress was not very well fitted to his form. It was in
the fashion of twenty years before. Grayish pantaloons, patched in
divers places with dark cloth by an unskilful hand; a vest from which
the buttons had long since departed, and which was looped together
by pieces of string, but not closely enough to conceal a dirty and
tattered shirt beneath; a coat in the last stages of shabbiness; while
over all hung a faded blue cloak, which Peter wore in all weathers. In
the sultriest days of August he might have been seen trudging along in
this old mantle, which did him the good service of hiding a multitude
of holes and patches, while in January he went no warmer clad. There
were some who wondered how he could stand the bitter cold of winter
with no more adequate covering; but if Peter's body was as tough as
his conscience, there was no fear of his suffering.

Charlie paused a moment to see what it was that the old man was hunting
for.

"Have you lost anything?" he asked.

"Yes," said Peter, in quavering accents. "See if you can't find it,
that's a good boy. Your eyes are better than mine."

"What is it?"

"It is some money, and I--I'm so poor, I can't afford to lose it."

"How much was it?"

"It wasn't much, but I'm so poor I need it."

Charlie espied a cent, lying partially concealed by mud, just beside
the curb-stone. He picked it up.

"This isn't what you lost, is it?"

"Yes," said Peter, seizing it eagerly. "You're a good boy to find it. A
good boy!"

"Well," thought Charlie, wondering, as the old man hobbled off with his
recovered treasure, "I'd rather be poor than care so much for money as
that. People say old Peter's worth his thousands. I wonder whether it
is so."

Charlie little dreamed how much old Peter was likely to influence his
destiny, and how, at his instigation, before a week had passed over his
head, he would find himself in a very disagreeable situation.

We must follow Peter.

With his eyes fixed on the ground he shuffled along, making more rapid
progress than could have been expected. Occasionally he would stoop
down and pick up any little stray object which arrested his attention,
even to a crooked pin, which he thrust into his cloak, muttering as he
did so, "Save my buying any. I haven't had to buy any pins for more'n
ten years, and I don't mean to buy any more while I live. Ha! ha!
Folks are _so_ extravagant! They buy things they don't need, or that
they might pick up, if they'd only take the trouble to keep their eyes
open. 'Tisn't so with old Peter. He's too cunning for that. There goes
a young fellow dressed up in the fashion. What he's got on must have
cost nigh on to a hundred dollars. What dreadful extravagance! Ha!
ha! It hasn't cost old Peter twenty dollars for the last ten years. If
he had spent money as some do, he might have been in the poor-house by
this time. Ugh! ugh! it costs a dreadful sum to live. If we could only
come into the world with natural clothes, like cats, what a deal better
it would be. But it costs the most for food. Oh dear! what a dreadful
appetite I've got, and I _must_ eat. All the money spent for victuals
seem thrown away. I've a good mind, sometimes, to go to the poor-house,
where it wouldn't cost me anything. What a blessing it would be to eat,
if you could only get food for nothing!"

It is very clear that Peter would have been far better off, as far as
the comforts of life are concerned, in the city almshouse; but there
were some little obstacles in the way of his entering. For instance,
it would scarcely have been allowed a public pensioner to go round
quarterly to collect his rents,--a thing which Peter would hardly have
relinquished.

Reflections upon the cost of living brought to Peter's recollection
that he had nothing at home for supper. He accordingly stepped into a
baker's shop close at hand.

"Have you got any bread cheap?" he inquired of the baker.

"We intend to sell at moderate prices."

"What do you ask for those loaves?" said the old man, looking wistfully
at some fresh loaves piled upon the counter, which had been but a short
time out of the oven.

"Five cents apiece," said the baker. "I'll warrant you will find them
good. They are made of the best of flour."

"Isn't five cents rather dear?" queried Peter, his natural appetite
struggling with his avarice.

"Dear!" retorted the baker, opening his eyes in astonishment; "why, my
good sir, at what price do you expect to buy bread?"

"I've no doubt they're very good," said Peter, hastily; "but have you
any stale loaves? I guess they'll be better for me."

"Yes," said the baker, "I believe I have, but they're not as good as
the fresh bread."

"How do you sell your stale loaves?" inquired Peter, fumbling in his
pocket for some change.

"I sell them for about half price--three cents apiece."

"You may give me one, then; I guess it'll be better for me."

Even Peter was a little ashamed to acknowledge that it was the price
alone which influenced his choice.

The baker observed that, notwithstanding his decision, he continued to
look wistfully towards the fresh bread. Never having seen old Peter
before, he was unacquainted with his character, and judging from his
dilapidated appearance that he might be prevented, by actual poverty,
from buying the fresh bread, exclaimed with a sudden impulse: "You seem
to be poor. If you only want one loaf, I will for this once give you a
fresh loaf for three cents--the same price I ask for the stale bread."

"Will you?"

Old Peter's eyes sparkled with eagerness as he said this.

"Poor man!" thought the baker with mistaken compassion; "he must
indeed be needy, to be so pleased."

"Yes," he continued, "you shall have a loaf this once for three cents.
Shall I put it in a paper for you?"

Peter nodded.

Meanwhile he was busy fumbling in his pockets for the coins requisite
to purchase the loaf. He drew out three battered cents, and deposited
them with reluctant hand on the counter. He gazed at them wistfully
while the baker carelessly swept them with his hand into the till
behind the counter; and then with a sigh of resignation, at parting
with the coins, seized the loaf and shambled out into the street.

He put the bundle under his arm, and hastened up the street, his mouth
watering in anticipation of the feast which awaited him. Do not laugh,
reader,--little as you may regard a fresh loaf of bread, it was indeed
a treat to Peter, who was accustomed, from motives of economy, to
regale himself upon stale bread.

The baker was congratulating himself upon having done a charitable
action, when Peter came back in haste, pale with affright.

"I--I--," he stammered, "must have dropped some money. You haven't
picked up any, have you?"

"Not I!" said the baker, carelessly. "If you dropped it here you will
find it somewhere on the floor. Stay, I will assist you."

Peter seemed rather disconcerted than otherwise by this offer of
assistance, but could not reasonably interpose any objection.

After a very brief search Peter and the baker simultaneously discovered
the missing coin. The former pounced upon it, but not before the latter
had recognized it as a gold piece.

"Ho, ho!" thought he, in surprise, "my charity is not so well bestowed
as I thought. Do you have many such coins?" he asked, meaningly.

"I?" said Peter, hastily, "Oh no! I am very poor. This is all I have,
and I expect it will be gone soon,--it costs so much to live!"

"It'll never cost you much," thought the baker, watching the shabby
figure of the miser as he receded from the shop.




                                  II.

                         A MISER'S HOUSEHOLD.


Peter Manson owned a small house in an obscure street. It was a
weather-beaten tenement of wood, containing some six or eight rooms,
all of which, with one exception, were given over to dirt, cobwebs,
gloom, and desolation. Peter might readily have let the rooms which
he did not require for his own use, but so profound was his distrust
of human nature, that not even the prospect of receiving rent for
the empty rooms could overcome his apprehension of being robbed by
neighbors under the same roof. For Peter trusted not his money to banks
or railroads, but wanted to have it directly under his own eye or
within his reach. As for investing his gold in the luxuries of life,
or even in what were generally considered its absolute necessaries, we
have already seen that Peter was no such fool as that. A gold eagle
was worth ten times more to him than its equivalent in food or clothing.

With more than his usual alacrity, old Peter Manson, bearing under his
cloak the fresh loaf which he had just procured from the baker on such
advantageous terms, hastened to his not very inviting home.

Drawing from his pocket a large and rusty door-key, he applied it to
the door. It turned in the lock with a creaking sound, and the door
yielding to Peter's push he entered.

The room which he appropriated to his own use was in the second story.
It was a large room, of some eighteen feet square, and, as it is
hardly necessary to say, was not set off by expensive furniture. The
articles which came under this denomination were briefly these,--a
cherry table which was minus one leg, whose place had been supplied by
a broom handle fitted in its place; three hard wooden chairs of unknown
antiquity; an old wash-stand; a rusty stove which Peter had picked up
cheap at an auction, after finding that a stove burned out less fuel
than a fireplace; a few articles of crockery of different patterns,
some cracked and broken; a few tin dishes, such as Peter found
essential in his cooking; and a low truckle bedstead with a scanty
supply of bedclothes.

Into this desolate home Peter entered.

There was an ember or two left in the stove, which the old man
contrived, by hard blowing, to kindle into life. On these he placed a
few sticks, part of which he had picked up in the street early in the
morning, and soon there was a little show of fire, over which the miser
spread his hands greedily as if to monopolize what little heat might
proceed therefrom. He looked wistfully at the pile of wood remaining,
but prudence withheld him from putting on any more.

"Everything costs money," he muttered to himself. "Three times a day
I have to eat, and that costs a sight. Why couldn't we get along with
eating once a day? That would save two thirds. Then there's fire. That
costs money, too. Why isn't it always summer? Then we shouldn't need
any except to cook by. It seems a sin to throw away good, bright,
precious gold on what is going to be burnt up and float away in smoke.
One might almost as well throw it into the river at once. Ugh! only to
think of what it would cost if I couldn't pick up some sticks in the
street. There was a little girl picking up some this morning when I was
out. If it hadn't been for her, I should have got more. What business
had she to come there, I should like to know?"

"Ugh, ugh!"

The blaze was dying out, and Peter was obliged, against his will, to
put on a fresh supply of fuel.

By this time the miser's appetite began to assert itself, and rising
from his crouching position over the fire he walked to the table on
which he had deposited his loaf of bread. With an old jack-knife he
carefully cut the loaf into two equal parts. One of these he put back
into the closet. From the same place he also brought out a sausage, and
placing it over the fire contrived to cook it after a fashion. Taking
it off he placed it on a plate, and seated himself on a chair