“There seem to be other things than a spiked martingale which can pick a man up and keep him away from his own business,” he mused. “What fool notion possesses me to go out there to-morrow I cannot understand. However, I can go and look on without butting into stuff that's no affair of mine.”
Two men were shuffling past in the road. In the utter silence of that summer night their conversation carried far.
“Yes, sir, as I was saying, there he lays dead! When I was with him on the Luther Briggs he fell from the main crosstrees, broke both legs and one arm, and made a dent in the deck, and he got well. And a week ago, come to-morrow, he got a sliver under his thumb, and there he lays dead.”
“It's the way it often is in life. Whilst a man is looking up into the sky so as to see the big things and dodge 'em, he goes to work and stubs his toe over a knitting-needle.”
“That's right,” Captain Mayo informed himself; “but I can't seem to help myself, somehow!”
XII ~ NO PLACE POR THE SOLES OP THEIR FEET
Don't you hear the old man roaring, Johnny,
One more day? Don't you hear that pilot bawling,
One more day? Only one more day, my Johnny,
One more day! O come rock and roll me over,
One more day.
—Windlass Song.
When the subject of the proposed expedition to Hue and Cry was broached at the breakfast-table, Captain Epps Candage displayed prompt interest.
“It's going to be a good thing for the section round about here—roust 'em off! Heard 'em talking it over down to Rowley's store last evening. I'll go along with you and see it done.”