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A stout seafaring man flings the whole weight of his ponderous pilot-coated body upon G and me: I hear a roar of water, and, lo! we are washed right up alongside of the rude landing-place, still in the boat indeed, but wet and frightened to the last degree.
Often enough when the first of the month came round, and I applied to him for my wage, he would only blow through his nose at me, and stare me down; but before the week was out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my fourpenny piece, and repeat his orders to look out for "the seafaring man with one leg." How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you.
The speaker was a short, grizzled, seafaring man, with a kind face and good-humoured mouth. He drove execrably, and pulled his quiet mare right back upon her haunches. I answered that it was. "Are you bound for there? Yes? Jump up then. I'll give you a lift." I looked at Tom; he, of course, was ready for anything that would save trouble, so we clambered up beside the stranger.
A glance told us that her sea-worthiness was questionable and that her over-burdening cargo pressed her Plimsoll mark close to the water line. We were to learn by degrees that her timbers were rotten, her plates rust-eaten and her engines junk. Her officers were outcasts from respectable seafaring, none too cordial in their relations with admiralty courts.
Here was not only a seafaring man, accustomed to battling with the elements, skilled in the handling of poles, and acquainted with swift and ofttimes dangerous currents, but a brother brush, a man conversant with design and pigments; an artist, keenly sensitive to straight lines, harmony of tints, and delicate manipulation of surfaces. I handed him the key at once.
The Indians whose village he had joined were that morning breaking up camp to begin their spring pilgrimage down the coast along various fishing haunts; for agriculture was a thing unknown to these savages. They were a seafaring people in canoes. At that time even invading Europeans had gained little mastery of the soil. Camp and fortress were on the same side of the river.
"Truck farmer," repeated Wilton Barnstable. "Is not Abernethy an old sea captain?" asked Cleggett. "Why, no, I believe not," said Barnstable. "At least I never heard so. He is well known as a small truck gardener in this neighborhood. It is true that he comes of a seafaring family indeed, it is his boast.
I think he has a desire to follow a definite calling, though now his taste seems to draw him towards a seafaring life." Benjamin could have appreciated this last remark, if it had been uttered in his hearing. For he had listened to so much counsel upon this point, that he had no desire to run from one thing to another. And he continued to cherish this feeling.
However, it is not with slavery, but with the slave trade we have to do. Circumstances largely forced upon the New England colonies their unsavory preëminence in this sort of commerce. To begin with, their people were as we have already seen, distinctively the seafaring folk of North America.
But in all other matters he was open; and especially delighted in running on about ships and seafaring for the man was a born sailor and loved his profession with all his heart.
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