"Aye, Mart'n, if she don't smell us a-coming and bear away from us. And yet she must be a clean, fast vessel, but we'll overhaul her going roomer or on a bowline."
"Roomer? Speak plain, Godby, I'm no mariner!"
"Time'll teach ye, pal! Look'ee now, 'roomer' means 'large,' and 'large' means 'free,' and 'free' means wi' a quartering-wind, and that means going away from the wind or the wind astarn of us; whiles 'on a bowline' means close-hauled agin the wind, d'ye see?"
"Godby, 'tis hard to believe you that same peddler I fell in with at the 'Hop-pole.'"
"Why, Mart'n, I'm a cove as adapts himself according. Give me a pack and I'm all peddler and j'y in it, gi'e me a ship and I'm all mariner to handle her sweet and kind and lay ye a course wi' any—though guns is my meat, Mart'n. Fifteen year I followed the sea and a man is apt to learn a little in such time. So here stand I this day not only gunner but master's mate beside of as tight a ship, maugre the crew, as ever sailed—and all along o' that same chance meeting at the 'Hop-pole.'"
"And though a friend of Bym you knew little of Adam Penfeather?"
"Little enough, Mart'n. Joel be no talker—but it do seem Jo was one of the Coast-Brotherhood once when Cap'n Penfeather saved his life and that, years agone. So Joel comes home and sets up marriage, free-trade and what not, when one day lately Master Adam walks into the 'Peck o' Malt,' and no whit changed for all the years save his white hair. And here comes rain, Mart'n—"
"And wind!" says I as the stout ship reeled and plunged to the howling gust.
"No, Mart'n," roared Godby above the piping tumult, "not real wind, pal—a stiffish breeze—jolly capful."
Slowly the night wore away and therewith the buffeting wind gentled somewhat; gradually in the east was a pale glimmer that, growing, showed great, black masses of torn cloud scudding fast above our reeling mastheads and all about us a troubled sea. But as the light grew, look how I might, nowhere could I descry aught of any ship upon that vast horizon of foaming waters.