“Wal, no. There ain’t no great use for sich. They’re a kind o’ luxury, you see. I don’t have any call for them. There’s other machines, too, that they talk about, sech as quadrupeds an’ sextons; but I never bother my head about, ’em.”
“Why, how do you manage to sail your schooner?”
“How? Why, jest up sail an’ let her slide.”
“But what do you do when you’re out of sight of land?”
“Never git out of sight. Ef I should, I’d steer straight back for the land agin.”
“What do you do in the fog?” asked Bart.
“The fog? I jest do the best I kin. Any ways, I don’t see what use a sexton would be in a fog, nor a quadruped nuther. Then them sort o’ con-sarns have to be worked by the sun. So, you see, they’re no manner o’ use in these here waters, nor in no waters at all. People git along jest as well without ’em. Why, here am I, an’ I bin sailin’ this forty year, an’ never tetched a sexton nor a quadruped; and me bin all the way to Bosting. Besides, did Noah make his vyge in the Ark with a quadruped? No, sir. Did Solomon have one in the ship that he sailed to Ophir? Agin I say, no, sir. So I conclude that what the prophets, an’ patriarchs, an’ wise men of old,—an’ a darn sight better men than sea captains are as they go these times;—what they did without, we can do without.”
“But you have a compass?”
“Course I have.”
“They didn’t have a compass in those days.”