"They've gone down yonder, t'other side of the wharf, Mis' Pember," said a middle-aged sea captain, whose interest in his kind had not been obliterated by the forced loneliness of northern voyages.
The woman paused and glanced doubtfully down one of the byways that led between small, weather-beaten houses and around disconcerting abutments to the water, and then forward, straight along the way she had been travelling, which led out of the town.
"I'd rather fixed on their going down Point-ways this evening," she said.
"Well, they ain't," rejoined Captain Phippeny, with that absence of mere rhetoric characteristic of people whose solid work is done otherwise than by speech.
Mrs. Pember nodded, at once in acknowledgment and farewell, and, turning about, followed the path he had indicated, her gait acquiring a certain precipitancy as she went down the rough, stony slope. At the foot of the descent she paused again, and looked to the right and left. Captain Phippeny was watching her from his vantage ground above. His figure was one unmistakably of the seaboard. His trousers were of a singular cut, probably after a pattern evolved in all its originality by Mrs. Phippeny, her active imagination working towards practical effect. In addition, he wore a yellow flannel shirt ribbed with purple, which would hopelessly have jaundiced a rose-leaf complexion, but which, having exhausted its malignancy without producing any particular effect, ended by gently harmonizing with the captain's sandy hair, reddish beard, and tanned skin. His mouth was like a badly made buttonhole, which gaped a little when he smiled. He had a nose like a parrot's beak, and his eyes were blue, kindly, and wise in their straightforwardness. When he would render his costume absolutely de rigueur, he wore a leathern jacket with manifold pockets, from one to another of which trailed a gold watch-chain with a dangling horseshoe charm.
"I wonder the old woman don't take a dog with her and trace 'em out, she spends so much time on the hunt," he said to himself. "I declare for't, it's a sing'lar thing the way she everlastin' does get onto them 'prentices; ain't old enough to talk about settin' sail by themselves."
His quid of tobacco again resumed its claim to his undivided attention, and he leaned back against the fence and waited as idly as the drooping sails for a breath of something stirring. By and by it appeared in the shape of another old sailor, between whom and himself there was the likeness of two peas, save for a slight discrepancy of feature useful for purposes of identification.
"You told her where they'd gone, I reckon," he remarked, with a slight chuckle, as he too leaned up against the fence and looked out over the harbor.
"Yes, I did," replied Captain Phippeny. "I didn't have no call to tell her a lie."
"Kinder hard on the young uns," observed the new-comer.