“A steamer—a Dago—rin the auld girl doon,” he said, “an’ the swine sheered off an’ left us to droon, for all he knew.”
He paused a moment, then went on, his voice rising suddenly to a lament:
“She wasna muckle to look at ... but, man, she’d gran’ guts in her!”
Kavanagh let him have the last word. In the circumstances, he felt he could afford it.
ORANGES
THE clipper ship “Parisina” lay becalmed off the Western Islands. The gallant Nor’-East Trade which had hummed steadily through her royals for ten blue and golden days and star-sown nights had tailed away ignominiously into a succession of fitful, faint, and baffling airs which kept the wearied crew constantly hauling the yards at the bidding of every shift of the variable breeze, and withal scarcely served to give the clipper leeway; and had died off last of all into a flat calm.