“Dunno about overtake, my lad, but I’m going to overhaul him. Here, Zeke, come and lay hold of this here tiller. You keep her full. Elim, you and me’s going to get up that forsle. I’m going tew put yew chaps aboard o’ that schooner if I sail on for a week.”
“Without provisions?” said Gunson, sadly.
“Who says ’thout provisions,” retorted the man. “There’s a locker forrard and there’s a locker aft, for we never know how long we may be getting back when we’re out fishing. I say I’m going to put you aboard that there schooner for the dollars as we ’greed on first, and if I don’t, why I’m more of a Dutchman than lots o’ them as comes from the east to set up business in ’Frisco. There!”
Chapter Sixteen.
Emulating the Cornishmen.
Unwittingly we had made friends with the master of the little fishing craft and his men; and as we sat watching them in the moonlight, and looking away at the schooner, which always stood out in the distance faint and misty, as if some thing of shadow instead of real, a spar was got out from where it was lashed below the thwarts, and run out over the bows, a bolt or two holding it in its place, while the stays were made fast to the masthead and the sides of the boat. Then a large red sail was drawn out of the locker forward, bent on, run up, and the boat heeled over more and more.
“Don’t capsize us,” said Gunson. “Can she bear all that sail?”
“Ay, and more too. If we capsized yew we should capsize ourselves too, and what’s more, our missuses at home, and that wouldn’t do. We won’t capsize yew. Only sit well up to the side, and don’t mind a sprinkle of water now and then. I’m going to make the old girl fly.”