I ain’ afraid of the stormy sea,
Nor critters that swim it, whatever they be,
But a witch of a woman is what floors me.”
—Sea-song of the “Baches of Bucksport.”
The Palermo packet, “Effort,” rocked slowly on the refuse-strewn ooze in her berth at Merrithew’s wharf, Square Harbour, her gray, weather-streaked sides rubbing at the barnacles on the piles. On the upper step of her cuddy companionway sat her skipper, Captain Nymphus Bodfish, rubbing his raspy palm over his bristly gray beard, the little curls of which were much like barnacles, too.
“I tell ye, set quiet,” he growled down the companionway. “I ain’t run packet here for ten years not to know when trains leave or not to know how to telefoam for a hack when I want one. That hack will be here ha’f-past twelve and it will get you to the deppo plenty in time.”
In a little while the complaining whine of a woman’s voice came up the companionway again. The captain impatiently twitched at a leather chain and flipped a big silver watch out of his pocket.
“Ten minits arter twelve, if ye’ve got to know,” he grumbled. “And it was eight minits arter twelve when you asked before. Now I ain’t no town clock to set here passin’ down time to ye ev’ry second or two. I say you’ll get to that deppo. So set quiet.”
But in a little while the complaining voice came up once more—the voice of a woman who was hoarse with much weeping.
“It ain’t no time now to be wishin’ that,” he snapped impatiently. “Your wishin’ wants to be all done up ahead when you make up your mind to run away from your husband. It’s all been fixed and arranged and you’ve agreed to do thus and so, and now there ain’t nothin’ to do but set quiet, set quiet, I tell you.”