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Updated: April 30, 2025
"Of course," said the marine, "there is a great difference between a boy and a Water-devil, and it is impossible for anybody to know how fast the latter can count, especially as he may be supposed to be used to it. Well, I couldn't stand it any longer on deck, and having nothing else to do, I turned in and went to sleep." "To sleep! Went to sleep!" exclaimed Mrs. Fryker.
But the traveller did not sit alone before the crackling fire of logs, for the night being cool, a table was drawn near to one side of the fire-place, and by this sat Mistress Fryker and her daughter Joanna, both engaged in some sort of needle-work.
"Look here," said the blacksmith, "can't you skip the girl and get back to the Devil?" "No," said the marine, "I couldn't do that. The two are mixed together, so to speak, so that I have to tell you of both of them." "You don't mean to say," exclaimed Mrs. Fryker, speaking for the first time, and by no means in soft and musical tones, "that he swallowed her?"
My mind seemed to forsake me; I did not even try to call out and give the alarm to the others. Why should I? What could they do?" "If it had been me," said Mrs. Fryker, in a sort of gasping whisper, "I should have died right there." The marine turned his eyes in the direction of the blacksmith's daughter. She was engaged with her work, and was not looking at him.
The marine ceased to speak, and Mrs. Fryker heaved a sigh. "It makes me shiver to think of all that down so deep," she said; "but I must say I am disappointed." "In what way?" asked the marine. "A Water-devil," said she, "as big as six whales, and with a funnelly mouth to suck in people, is different; but, of course, after all, it was better as it was."
In the village of Riprock there was neither tavern nor inn, for it was but a small place through which few travellers passed; but it could not be said to be without a place of entertainment, for if by chance a stranger or two or three of them, for that matter wished to stop at Riprock for a meal, or to pass the night, there was the house of blacksmith Fryker, which was understood to be always open to decent travellers.
Fryker and her daughter, "is a little piece of wood with a long line to it, that they throw out behind a vessel to see how fast she is going. I am not a regular Jack Tar myself, and don't understand the principle of the thing, but it tells you exactly how many miles an hour the ship is going. "In about two minutes Mr.
Before he began the marine glanced about him, with a certain good-natured wistfulness which might have indicated, to those who understood the countenances of the sea-going classes, a desire to wet his whistle; but if this expression were so intended it was thrown away, for blacksmith Fryker took no spirits himself, nor furnished them to anybody else.
Presently he said: "I have done things of nearly every sort, although not exactly that; but I have thought my ship was going down with all on board, and that's the next worst thing to going down, you know." "And how was that?" inquired Fryker. "Well," said the other, "it happened more times than I can tell you of, or even remember. Yes," said he, meditatively, "more times than I can remember."
Now blacksmith Fryker was a prudent man, and he did not consider that the privileges of his hearthstone always freely granted to a decent stranger included an acquaintance with his pretty daughter; and so, without allowing his women-folk a chance to enter into the conversation, he offered the stranger a different subject to hammer upon.
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