The Skipper's Schooner.
No better specimen of the genus, genuine Yankee nation, can be found, imagined or described, than the skippers of along shore, from Connecticut river to Eastport, Maine. These critters give full scope to the Hills and Hacketts of the stage, and the Sam Slicks and Falconbridges of the press, to embody and sketch out in the broadest possible dialect of Yankee land. One of these "tarnal critters," it is my purpose to draw on for my brief sketch, and I wish my readers to do me the credit to believe that for little or no portion of my yarn or language am I indebted to fertility of imagination, as the incidents are real, and quite graphic enough to give piquancy to the subject.
Last spring, just after the breaking up of winter, a down-east smack or schooner, freighted with cod-fish and potatoes, I believe, rounded off Cape Ann light, and owing to head winds, or some other perversity of a nautical nature, could no further go; so the skipper and his crew—one man, green as catnip—made for an anchorage, and hove the "hull consarn" to. Here they lay, and tossed and chafed, at their moorings, for a day or two, without the slightest indication on the part of the weather to abate the nuisance. So the commander of the schooner got in his little "dug-out," and giving the aforesaid crew special injunctions to keep all fast, he pulled off to shore to take a look around.
Now, it so fell out that in the course of a few hours' time after the departure of the skipper, a snorting east wind sprang up, and not only blew great guns, but chopped up a short, heavy sea, perfectly astonishing and alarming to Hezekiah Perkins, in the rolling and pitching schooner. It was Hez's first attempt at seafaring; and this sort of reeling and waltzing about, as a matter of course, soon discomboberated his bean basket, and set his head in a whirl and dancing motion—better conceived by those who have seen the sea elephant than described. Hez got dea-a-athly sick, so sick he could not budge from the stern sheets, where he had taken a squat in the early commencement of his difficulties. In the mean time, the skipper came down to the beach and hailed the victim:
"Hel-lo! hel-lo!"
Hez feebly elevated his optics, and looking to the windward, where stood his noble captain, he made an effort to say over something:
"Wha-a-t ye-e-e want?"
"What do I want? Why, yeou pesky critter, yeou, go for'ard thar and hist the jib, take up the anchor, put your helm a-lee, and beat up to town!"
This was all very well, provided the skipper was there to superintend, manage and carry out his voluble orders; but as the surf prevented him from coming on board, and the lightness of Hez's head militated against the almost superhuman possibility of carrying out the skipper's orders, things remained in statu quo, the skipper ashore, and Hez fervently wishing he was too.
"Ain't you a-going to stir round there, and save the vessel?" bawled the excited captain.