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Updated: May 5, 2025
"I wouldn't mind the frost or snow, or anything else," growled Joe Stubley, pausing in the midst of his labours among the fish, "if it warn't for them sea-blisters. Just look at that, Jim," he added, turning up the hard sleeve of his oiled coat, and exposing a wrist which the feeble rays of the lantern showed to be badly excoriated and inflamed.
A roar of laughter on deck announced that Bob Lumsden had found something quite to his taste. "First-rate ha! ha! I wonder if it's all true." "Hold your noise there," cried Hawkson; "who d'ee think can learn off a hymn wi' you shoutin' like a bo'sun's mate an' Duffy snortin' like a grampus?" "Ah, just so," chimed in Stubley, looking up from his board. "Why don't you let it out, David?
Plunging his long right arm down, and holding on to the boat with his left, he caught the drowning man by the hair. Strong and willing arms helped, and Stubley was hauled inboard restored to life, opportunity, and hope and flung into the bottom of the boat. The oars were shipped, and they pulled for the Lively Poll. As they rode away they saw that other boats were proceeding towards the coper.
Besides a number of strangers, they found in that den of iniquity Joe Stubley, Ned Bryce, and Groggy Fox which last had, alas! forgotten his late determination to "leave the poor old stranded wreck and pull for the shore." He and his comrades were still out among the breakers, clinging fondly to the old wreck. The boys saw at a glance that no assistance was to be expected from these men.
"Humph! that's just like him, the hypercrit," growled Joe Stubley; "no sooner comes a breeze o' good luck than off he goes, too big and mighty for his old business. He was always preachin' that money was the root of all evil, an' now he's found it out for a fact." "No, Fred never said that `money was the root of all evil, you thick-head," returned Duffy; "he said it was the love of money.
"Who'll spin it?" asked Duffy, sitting down, and preparing to add to the fumes of the place. "Come, Stub, you tape it off; it'll be better occupation than growlin' at the poor weather, what's never done you no harm yet though there's no sayin' what it may do if you go on as you've bin doin', growlin' an' aggravatin' it." "I never spin yarns," said Stubley.
Stubley was violently argumentative, Fox was maudlinly sentimental, and Bryce was in an exalted state of heroic resolve. Each sought to gain the attention and sympathy of the other, and all completely failed, but they succeeded in making a tremendous noise, which seemed partially to satisfy them as they drank deeper.
They did so with a bad grace, but the order was given in a tone which they well understood must not be disobeyed. As they pushed off, Stubley staggered and fell into the sea. Another moment and he would have been beyond all human aid, but Lockley caught a glimpse of his shaggy black head as it sank.
"Well that it's no worse, boy," observed Freeman, "for we've got no medicine-chest to fly to like that lucky Short-Blue fleet." "That's true, Jim," responded Martin; "I wish we had a Gospel smack with our fleet, for our souls need repairing as well as our bodies." "There you go," growled Stubley, flinging down a just finished fish with a flap of indignation.
"Tell us," said Stubley, "how it was you come to be saved the night the Saucy Jane went down." "Ah! lads," said Lockley, with a look and a tone of gravity, "there's no fun in that story. It was too terrible and only by a miracle, or rather as poor Fred Martin said at the time by God's mercy, I was saved." "Was Fred there at the time!" asked Duffy. "Ay, an' very near lost he was too.
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