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Of coorse I warn't goin' below for such a small matter, so I pulls out my hankerchief, an' says I to the little man that lost his hat, `Just take a round turn here, Jim, says I, `an' I'll be ready for action again in two minutes. Jim, he tied it up, but before he quite done it, the round shot was pitchin' into us like hail, cuttin' up the sails and riggin' most awful.
"Well, a few minutes ago it may be five, or it may be ten I'd just swung round to walk aft from the main riggin' when, as my eyes travelled away out here over the port quarter, I got the notion into my head that there was somethin' goin' on down there, for it seemed to me that I'd got a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, as it might be of a small sparkin', like like well, hang me if I know what it was like, unless it might be twenty or thirty pistols or muskets all being fired close after one another."
He still retained his old staff, composed of Rawlins, adjutant-general; Riggin, Lagow, and Hilyer, aides; and he had a small company of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry as an escort. For more than a month he thus remained, without any apparent authority, frequently visiting me and others, and rarely complaining; but I could see that he felt deeply the indignity, if not insult, heaped upon him.
"Like as not we'd get the boat knocked about, an' maybe have her riggin' damaged. We've been a-fresh paintin' of her too, and that would be spoiled. It's a powerful long way, and then there's the gettin' back. It means the loss of two or three days' work, and there's plenty of fish on the coast now, and a good market for them." "Would thirty pounds pay you?" asked Ezra.
I had fetched my axe with me wi' the intention of riggin' up a log trap near the mouth o' the cave. I had also fetched a jug o' molasses and some yeers o' green corn to bait the trap, for I know'd the bar war fond o' both. "Well, I got upon the spot, an' makin' as leetle rumpus as possible, I went to work to build my trap.
The moonlight was a little dull with fog, but he could see her, plain, a-comin' on before the wind with her white riggin' and bare poles, and hear the water sousin' under her bows. He said 'twas in his mind more 'n a dozen times to cut her adrift.
It ain't no plot o' mine, 'cept to oblige you. I don't want to move my riggin' nowhere for the sake o' two trees one tree, you might say; there ain't much o' anything but fire-wood in the sprangly one. I shall end up over on the Foss lot next week, an' then I'm goin' right up country quick 's I can, before the snow begins to melt."
So I had quite a spell o' freedom. Mother made my new skirt long because I was growing, and I poked about the deck after that, real discouraged, feeling the hem at my heels every minute, and as if youth was past and gone. I liked the trousers best; I used to climb the riggin' with 'em and frighten mother till she said an' vowed she'd never take me to sea again."
He greeted me genially. "Hello, Ros!" he said. "You out here? Thought you'd be busy overhaulin' George's runnin' riggin' and makin' sure he was all ready to heave alongside the parson." "I have been," I answered. "I am on my way back there now." "All right, all right.
"You've knowed me thutty years and sailed with me five, Dunk Butts, and ye're shinnin' into the wrong riggin' when ye come at me with a rock. I ain't in no very gentle spirits to-day, neither." "I wasn't doin' northin' to you," squealed Butts, his anger becoming mere querulous reproach, for the Cap'n's eye was fiery and Butts's memory was good.
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