My prayer’s for death by drowning.”
The devil was in him then. “Did you call me, skipper?” I sang out.
“Did I? Did I? Lord, Joe, I don’t know. Maybe I did. I feel like calling from here to Gloucester, and if I did I bet they’d hear me. God, Joe, but it’s good to be alive, isn’t it?––just to be alive. Whew! but I wish I had a few more sou’westers––just to see ’em scale. But what was it I wanted––but is the cook there?”
“He is––I c’n hear him talking.”
“Then go below and tell him, Joe––tell him to mouse his pots and kettles, for with sail alow and sail aloft, with her helmsman lashed and her house awash, in a living gale and the devil’s own sea, the Johnnie Duncan’s going to the west’ard.”
And she certainly went.