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The wheel was fixed upon the tiller in such a manner that the whole concern travelled backwards and forwards across the deck in the maddest kind of way. For the first quarter of an hour, in spite of the September chill, the sweat poured off me in streams. And the course well, if was not steering, it was sculling; the old bumboat was wobbling all around like a drunken tailor with two left legs.
I was informed she had a great deal of custom, as she understood how to manage the officers, and made herself generally useful to them. She had been a bumboat woman for six years, and had made a great deal of money. Indeed, it was reported, that if a first lieutenant wanted forty or fifty pounds, Mrs Trotter would always lend it to him, without requiring his promissory note.
Experience has given the opinion some color of truth. Our bumboat boarded us early and stayed with us until the corporal of the guard called "time."
What the in do you mean by taking their gold-leaf? My , are we a set of pirates to scrape the guts out of a Levantine bumboat? Look contrite, you butt-ended, broad-breeched, bottle-bellied, swivel-eyed son of a tinker, you! My Soul alive, can't I maintain discipline in my own ship without a blacksmith of a boiler-riveter putting me to shame before a yellow-nosed picaroon.
Yer pretty flowers done it pretty flowers spit o' hell! I knowed 'em I fought 'em I'll fight 'em to the death of 'em!" His little red-rimmed eyes hardly veiled his contempt for Milt Rogers. A cowman, sailing this dusky purple bay to see a girl! A girl who sang in the lily drift a-sailing on this dirty, reeking bumboat, with cattle dying jammed in the pens!
She was the widow of a boatswain, who had set her up in the bumboat business with some money he had acquired a short time before his death, and she had continued it ever since on her own account. People said that she was rich, but riches are comparative, and if a person in a seaport town, and in her situation, could show 200 or 300 pounds at her bankers, she was considered rich.
He's all right for the rest o' his life. An' as for me as gave him his start, look at me. Ain't I a sight? Here I am, forty-two years old an' only a thousand dollars in my pocket. Instead of bein' master of a clipper ship, I'm mate on a dirty little bumboat. I fall asleep on deck an' dream an' somethin' drops on my face an' wakes me up. Is it a breadfruit, Mac? It is not. It's a head of cabbage.
"But, look here," he went on, "here's what I want to know, Barbecue how long are we a-going to stand off and on like a blessed bumboat? I've had a'most enough o' Cap'n Smollett; he's hazed me long enough, by thunder! I want to go into that cabin, I do. I want their pickles and wines, and that." "Israel," said Silver, "your head ain't much account, nor never was.
"You'll soon find out what tick is, after you have been a week in the bumboat," replied the lad, laughing. "Nine o'clock, my hearty; good-bye." So saying, the young sailor caught up his new clothes, and hastened down to the beach. The room was crowded with seamen and women, but they were too busy talking and laughing to pay any attention to Joey and his comrade.
It was a busy and animating sight. As he was lolling at the landing-place, a boat came on shore, which, from the description given by his young sailor friend, he was convinced was a bumboat; it had all the articles described by him, as well as many others, such as porter in bottles, a cask probably containing beer; leeks, onions, and many other heterogeneous matters, and, moreover, there was a fat woman seated in the stern.
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