“She blows aloft, she blows alow,
Take in your topsails early;”
Then Captain Buckingham, who sat leaning forward smoking, with his elbows on his knees, staring at the fire, at last, without stirring in his chair, he spoke up, and said, “She blows all right,” and we waited, thinking he might say more.
“Pemberton,” he went on, “the seaman follows his profit and luck around the world. You sit by your chimney and they come to you. And if I was doing it again, or my old ship, the Annalee, was to come banging and bouncing at this door, saying 'Have a cruise, Captain Buckingham; rise up!' I'd say: 'You go dock yourself.'”
“She might, if she came overland, maybe,” said Stevey Todd, “seeing it blows brisk, which I admits and I stands by, for she was a tall sailing ship was the Annalee.”
“She was that,” said Captain Tom; “the best ship I ever sailed in, barring the Hebe Maitland.”
Whereat Stevey Todd said, “There was a ship!” and Uncle Abimelech piped up again, singing these singular words:
“There was a ship
In Bailey's Slip.
One evil day
We sailed away
From Bailey's Slip
We sailed away, with Captain Clyde,
An old, old man with a copper hide,
In the Hebe Maitland sailed, Hooroar!
And fetched the coast of Ecuador.”
“Aye,” said Captain Tom. “Those were Kid Sadler's verses. There's many of 'em that Abe can say over, and he can glue a tune to 'em well, for he's got that kind of a memory that's loose, but stringy and long, and he always had. There's only Abe and Stevey Todd and me left of the Hebe Maitland's crew, unless Sadler and Little Irish maybe, for I left them in Burmah, and they may be there. But what I was going to say, Pemberton, is, I made a mistake somewhere.”
“Why,” said Pemberton, “there you may be right.”
“For I was that kind of young one,” the captain went on, “which if he's blown up with dynamite, he comes down remarking it's breezy up there. I was that careless.”