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No, I wan't cal'latin' to make a sailor out of you, son. For one reason, sailorin' ain't what it used to be; and, for another, I have my doubts whether a young feller of your bringin' up would make much of a go handlin' a bunch of fo'mast hands the first day out. No, I wasn't figgerin' to send you to sea . . . What do you suppose I brought you down to this place for this mornin'?"
"For fourteen days while the Posy Lass was drivin' off shore before an easterly gale, Cap'n Am'zon an' two others, lashed to the stump o' the fo'mast, ex-isted in a smother of foam an' spume, with the waves picklin' 'em ev'ry few minutes. And five raw potaters was all they had to eat in all that endurin' time!" "Five potatoes?" Lawford Tapp cried. "For three men? And for fourteen days?
This is, of course, providing that you start for Providence to-morrer morning. What d'you say?" He was thinking hard. "Suppose I don't make good?" he says. "I never worked in my life. And suppose she " "Oh, suppose your granny's pet hen hatched turkeys," I says, getting impatient, "I'll risk your making good. I wa'n't a first mate, shipping fo'mast hands ten years, for nothing.
"'I'd like to, Obed, he says; 'I'd like to almighty well, but I've got to go up to the store, if there is such a thing in this metropolus, and buy some stuff that I forgot to get in Newport. You see, we got orders to sail in a tearing hurry, and "'Send one of them fo'mast hands to the store, says I. 'You got to come with me.
Ellery, you remind me of a half-breed Portugee feller half Portugee and a half Indian that went to sea with my father, back in the old days. He hardly ever spoke a word, mainly grunted and made signs. One day he and another fo'mast hand went aloft in a calm to do somethin' to the tops'l.
If we are, I'll have to sleep in the daytime, like a fo'mast hand on night lookout." "But wasn't it splendid?" explained his wife. "Weren't they cultivated, brilliant people? You and I never went to anything like THAT dinner before, Daniel Dott." The captain admitted that they never did. "Could you make anything out of that game they were playin'?" he asked. "What was it they called it?" "Bridge.
There was another fo'mast hand besides Jerry and Solon aboard and Solon swears that all the hearty provision Jerry put on board for a four-day trip was two sticks of smoked herrin'. For two days, so Solon vows, they ate the herrin' and the other two they chewed the sticks.
"You ask Ros," shouted Alvin, pounding the counter beside him. "Say, Ros, Newcomb here seems to think that because a feller comes from the city and is rich that that gives him the right to order the rest of us around as if we was fo'mast hands. He says " "I don't neither!" yelled Thoph. "What I say is that money counts, and " "You do, too!
She's as right up and down as a schooner's fo'mast." Keith laughed heartily. "Emily is blunt and outspoken," he said. "She prides herself on that. But she is as square as a brick. She never says one thing to your face and another behind your back." "No, I I judge that's so. Well, that's all right; I ain't got any objections to that way of talkin' myself.
I'm goin' off with a gang to take up the last of my fish weirs and I thought maybe the little shaver'd like to go along. I need help in bossin' the fo'mast hands, you see, and he's some consider'ble of a driver, that second mate is. Yes sir-ee! You ought to hear him order 'em to get up anchor. Ho! ho! I Hey? Why why, what's the matter?" Thankful's face was still pale and she was trembling.
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