"A fine brother Moccasin yourself!" said the clothing dealer, "wantin' me to lose money on a sale."
So we went to another place, and he happened to be a Jew and not a Moccasin. Not that he wouldn't like to be a member of that noble order; which made O'Brien and Haile warm up to him, so that they forgot to argue about the price at all.
They had to saw a foot off Shorty's new pants to make them fit, and the coat came pretty low down on him; but no harm in that Bill and Oliver and I said. We got pretty good fits.
They bought tickets for us and we took the train to Gloucester, and then I went down to Tony Webber's to get a shave, and there was a young fellow in the chair next to me said to Tony: "Yer sh'd have been out in the breeze!"
"What vessel?" I asked.
"The Thunderbolt," he says.
"And what shape is she in?"
"Go down to the halibut company's wharf and see," he says.
I did go down later. She'd lost both masts to near her deck, and her bowsprit was broken off short at the knightheads—not a thing left on her except her last coat of paint and a few twisted yarns of her lower shrouds. But, thank the Lord, no men lost. They had all stayed aboard.
"They were luckier than the Hiawatha. Heard about the Hiawatha?" asked a man in the chair.