EPH'S NEW-YEAR'S BOOTS.

BY FRANK H. CONVERSE.

The ship Emerald, under topsails, is plunging and rolling over and through great mountains of storm-tossed wintry sea. Mr. Kendall, the sturdy little second mate, makes his way for'ard by clinging to the weather rail. He casts a glance at the side lights to make sure that they are burning clear, and then, in a cheery voice, hails the look-out.

"Only five minutes longer, Ned," he bawls, encouragingly; for cold as it is on deck, he knows that facing the bitter blast on the exposed forecastle is a hundred times worse.

Ned Rand returns the customary, "Ay, ay, sir," and vaguely wonders if he ever will be warm again. Not only is he drenched and chilled through and through, but the cold, which is growing more intense, has stiffened his soaked oil-clothes until they seem like a suit of tin armor. Like a dream the remembrance of a year ago that very night comes to mind, how, sitting around the glowing grate in the cozy home sitting-room, he, with the family, watched the old year out and the new in.

Ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, sounds faintly from aft.

"'Ring out the old, ring in the new,'"

grimly mutters Ned between his chattering teeth, as he strikes the knell of the old year on the big bell for'ard.

"Hillo-o-o in there! Eight bells, you sleepers! D'ye hear the news?"

As the sleepy, grumbling watch come on deck, the wheel and look-out are relieved.

"Go below, the port watch, but stand ready for a call," says Mr. Marline, the chief mate.

Ned is crawling stiffly down from the look-out, when very unexpectedly the long-legged overgrown boy who, without speaking, had relieved him, bawls in his ear, "Wish you a happy new year, Ned!"

Unexpectedly, I say, for the reason that the two boys, who were room-mates, have not spoken together before for a whole week. Ned hesitates a moment. Suddenly to mind come the familiar lines,

"The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false—ring in the true."

"Same to you, old fellow," he exclaims, as well as his chattering jaws will let him, and then creeping cautiously along the slippery, heaving deck, Ned enters the "boys' room" in the after-end of the house. Throwing off his oil-skins and drenched pea-jacket with a shiver, he is about to turn into his bunk, when he sees lying on his gray berth blanket a pair of half-worn rubber boots. Scrawled on a bit of paper tied to one of the loops are these words:

"A new yeres Presunt to ned i was keeping Them for you All the time from your aff shipmate, E Jackson."

As Ned reads this friendly message, his face begins to burn—perhaps from the heat of the coals of fire thus heaped upon his head; for the trouble between himself and his room-mate had begun about these very same rubber boots. Ned's had been accidentally washed overboard by a big sea a few days previous, he having laid them on the main hatch to dry; and vainly had he tried to buy this pair of Eph, who wore thick "cow-hides" in ordinary weather, keeping the rubber ones for extraordinary.

"You're a mean, contemptible skinflint, Eph Jackson," Ned had angrily exclaimed.

"Mebbe I be," returned Eph, as a dull red tinged his homely face; "but, all the same, you can't buy them boots: I've got another use for 'em."

High words followed. Ned called Eph "a hay-seed-haired countryman." Eph, in return, taunted Ned with hanging back when a royal had to be stowed or the flying jib furled; "a sogerin' skulk" was the uncomplimentary epithet which he applied to his room-mate, if I remember aright. Since which time, as I have said, no word had passed between the two until Eph had broken the ice with his New-Year's greeting.

"He's not such a bad lot, after all," said Ned, aloud. "The boots are a couple of sizes too large," he added, as he pulled them on over a pair of dry socks; "but they'll keep out the wet and cold, anyway."

But there was a sort of unconscious patronage in his way of accepting the welcome present, after all; for Ned Rand's father, who owned two-thirds of the Emerald, was a wealthy ship-builder of East Boston, while Eph Jackson was an uncultured young fellow from the country. Ned was making this his first sea-voyage "just for the fun of it"; Eph, because he had an old mother up among the Berkshire hills, for whom every cent of his wages was meant.

"Some day I cal'late to be a officer, an' git my forty or fifty dollars a month," said Eph, sturdily, to himself.

Ned had obtained his parents' consent that he should make a trial voyage with Captain Elton. "But don't favor him, Captain," privately suggested Mr. Rand.

"Favor him!" echoed the plain-spoken Captain; "I guess not. There's no favor shown aboard ships. Your boy will be treated the same as that long-legged young chap from the country who shipped yesterday—no better and no worse." Which assurance Ned has found to his extreme disgust is carried out to the very letter.

But the voice of the storm without grows louder and fiercer.

"I thought so!" growls Ned, as two hours later he hears the command to "turn out and shorten sail."

Ugh-h-h! It is ten degrees colder at least than when he went below. Mast and spar, brace and rigging, alike are cased in thin ice.

The upper topsails have been lowered on the caps, where they are thrashing as only stiff, half-frozen sails can thrash.

"Jump up there lively, and roll up the main topsail first," bellows Mr. Marline, and in a moment wiry little Mr. Kendall is in the main-rigging. Closely following him is Ned Rand, but not from any desire to show unusual activity. He has learned that in furling a sail the extremity of the yard is the easiest place, for here he has nothing particular to do except to hold on by the "lift" with one hand, and pass the yard-arm gasket to the man who stands next inside.

The sail is "picked up," and secured after a fashion, for it is as unmanageable as an oak plank. The gaskets are passed, and the men descend the slippery rigging. Ned delays as long as possible, for the fore and mizzen topsails have yet to be furled.

"You, Ned, are you going to stay on that yard all night?" thunders Mr. Marline from below, at which gentle hint Ned bestirs himself.

Crawling cautiously along the slippery, swaying foot-rope, one moment high in air, and the next with the boiling, seething sea beneath his feet, Ned is nearly half way in, when, as the ship rolls heavily to leeward, his mittened hands slip on the icy iron jack-stay, and with a wild cry, which is heard even above the storm, he is launched into space.

"Man overboard!" yells Mr. Kendall, who is very excitable.

Eph Jackson, who has been sent to the lee, hears it, and stooping, "yanks" the grating from under the helms-man's feet, sending it spinning over the rail.

Captain Elton was never known to be excited in his whole life.

"Put the wheel down, Jerry, and let her head come up in the wind." Raising his voice a little, he then orders the after-yards braced aback, and the fore stay-sail sheet raised.

While one watch is obeying this order, others of the crew clear away the port quarter boat. But when there is a call to man it, one and all hesitate, for verily it is venturing into the very jaws of death.

Eph Jackson suddenly leaves the lee wheel, and follows the plucky little second mate, who is shipping the rudder.

"If that young chap is goin'," mutters Bob Stacy, "blowed if I'll hang back;" and in another moment the boat is manned, and afloat in darkness and storm.

Meanwhile, what of Ned Rand? This: As his head disappeared under the icy waves he felt as though a terrible grasp had seized his ankles and was dragging him deeper and deeper despite his efforts to rise.

"It's my heavy boots," was the thought which flashed like lightning through his brain; and thanks to their size, he slipped them off one at a time, coming to the surface just as it seemed to him that his lungs were about to burst through holding his breath so long. Dashing the water from his eyes, he struck out manfully, yet with a sense of utter hopelessness, when his hand struck the grating, to which he clung convulsively. He saw rockets and blue-lights thrown up from the ship's deck, and shouted himself hoarse, for the Emerald was not a cable's-length distant.

But as he felt an awful numbing chill steal over him, against which he vainly struggled, he was dragged in over the bow of the Emerald's boat by the nervous arms of the bow oar—Mr. Ephraim Jackson.

"Darned if he ain't lost them boots a'ready!" exclaimed Eph, as the insensible boy was laid face down in the bottom of the boat.

Well, through God's mercy and Mr. Kendall's skill, they reached the ship in safety, but Eph—or indeed any of the boat's crew—will never forget the terrible pull, or how near they were being crushed by the ship's side in taking the boat inboard.

Ned was rubbed, filled to the throat with hot coffee, and stowed away in his bunk, so that by morning he was all right again, but, to his great joy, was excused from further duty, the ship being now off old Boston Light.

"You saved my life, Eph," says Ned, gratefully, as in high glee the two boys begin to pack their chests in readiness for going ashore, "and how shall I ever repay you?"

There was no mock modesty about Eph Jackson. "It ain't wuth mentionin'," looking up from his work, "but seem' 's you make so much of it, if you're a mind to buy me a pair o' new rubber boots, we'll call it square."

Which Ned afterward does, and, better still, invites Eph home to stay until the ship is again ready for sea; for Captain Elton has offered to take him as able seaman on the next voyage. A year later, and Mr. Jackson is second mate of the Emerald.

"Them rubber boots," he remarks aloud, as he incloses a money order for fifty dollars to his proud mother—"them rubber boots was a lucky New-Year's present for me."

"And for me too, Eph," smilingly returns Ned Rand, who stands close by.