Sam had to put in a word here. “Don’t you take any old line from him, Skipper. Fine days when steamboat men c’n tell us our business!”
“No fear of me, Sam. Sheer off, you,” and Crump waved the tug contemptuously away.
With a final word from the pilot-house, “Well, don’t blame me if you lose your prize and your men both,” the big sea tug moved toward the northwest, where soon she was lost in the haze.
VI
With the bark under weigh, Sam Leary organized his crew. Four men to the pumps and four men to chop ice, and himself everywhere—alow and aloft, pumping water, chopping ice, and back to the stern to advise with Crump Taylor as to the course.
“How’s she doin’?” Sam would call.
“Fine! fine! Go on—all right. I think she’s liftin’ a mite.”
“Think so?” and Sam, much cheered, would dash around deck again.
The ice was a toilsome proposition. It made about as fast as they could clear it. “I see them harvesting ice on the Kennebec one winter,” said young Gillis, by way of drawing an extra breath—“horses and ice-cutters—and that’s what we ought to have here.”
“I suppose so,” retorted Sam, “and wagons to carry it off, and ice-boats sailin’ around with cushions and young ladies in furs in ’em, and a little automobile engine to work the pumps, so all you’d have to do would be to stand watch once in a while and go below and mug up whenever you felt like it.”