"Why, sir, I took two half-hitches round his tail, soon as I see him come up. And I tell ye when I make two half-hitches, they hold; ask captain there, if I can't make hitches as will hold. What say, captain?"
Captain assented with a confirmatory nod.
"What did you do then?" said Picton. "Did you get him ashore?"
"Get him ashore?" muttered Red-Cap, covering his mouth with one broad brown hand to muffle a contemptuous laugh; "get him ashore! why, we was pretty well off shore for such a sail."
"You might have rowed him ashore," said Picton.
"Rowed him ashore?" echoed Red-Cap, with another contemptuous smile under the brown hand; "rowed him ashore?"
The traveller, finding he was in deep water, answered: "Yes; that is, if you were not too far out."
"A little too far out," replied Red-Cap; "why if I had been a hundred yards only from shore, it would ha' been too far to row, or sail in, with that shovel-nose, without counting the set-nets."
"And what did you do?" said Picton, a little nettled.
"Why," said Red-Cap, "I had to let him go, but first I cut out his liver, and that I did bring ashore, although it filled my boat pretty well full. You can judge how big it was: after I brought it ashore I lay it out on the beach and we measured it, Mr. McAlpin and me, and he'll tell you so too; we laid it out on the beach, that ere liver, and it measured seventeen feet, and then we didn't measure all of it."