The Skipper's Yarn

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This story deals with an old fishing skipper who, while standing by his ship, which is in dock, is accosted by a stranger who applies to him for work as a common sailor before the mast. The old skipper takes him aboard, perplexed by the fact that something in the stranger's face recalls other days. He ponders long and vainly to discover where he has seen this man whose face is so strangely familiar. Meeting him on deck during one of the lonely watches of the night, while far out at sea, it suddenly dawns upon him who the stranger is. One day the skipper comes upon his crew seated around the forecastle hatch telling yarns. They urge him to tell them a story, and, with the stranger seated nearby, the old skipper spins his yarn, which runs as follows: Twenty years before he and a shipmate landed upon a foreign shore. There they fell in with an old Hindoo tattoo-man. They decided to have their arms and breasts tattooed in the manner of all sailors. While being tattooed at the old Hindoo's house, they met his daughter, a beautiful dark-eyed maiden of the Orient. Both sailors fell in love with her, but Jack, the teller of the yarn, won her heart. His shipmate, seized with jealousy, determined to have revenge. Stealing a hidden letter, which Jack had written to the girl, he carried it to the Hindoo, and offered to buy his daughter from him. The Hindoo rose in all his wrath and attacked the sailor. To protect himself the sailor grappled with him. The struggle was too fierce for the old Hindoo, who fell, striking his head violently upon a stone step, and in a few moments passed away. The sailor, realizing what he had done and fearing detection, placed his shipmate's stolen letter in the dead man's hand and fled. The letter fastened the guilt upon Jack, who was seized, thrown into prison and condemned to death. Escaping from prison, he worked his way out of the country and danger. The yarn concluded, the skipper bares his arm to show the tattoo marks, the mute reminder of the one romance and tragedy of his life. But what of the shipmate, a sailor asked; had he ever met him again'; He had, and that only recently. Suddenly turning upon the stranger at his side, the old skipper pulls back his shirt and exposes to view the tattoo marks that correspond to his own. The guilty wretch is found at last. He is seized by his comrades and dragged below, while the old skipper sobs out his grief upon the deck.