"One year that I'll be at work—steady work—and five that I'm married. You're shipped, both ways. And I wear a seven and a quarter, soft hat, black preferred."
"If I don't win the first bet I will the second, sure," he says, confident. "'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands,' you know. Well, good-by, and good luck. Come in and see us whenever you get to New York."
We shook hands, and I walked out of that office, the office that had been my home port ever since I graduated from fust mate to skipper. And on the way to the Fall River boat I vowed my vow over and over again.
"Zebulon Snow," I says to myself—not out loud, you understand; for, accordin' to Scriptur' or the Old Farmers' Almanac or somethin', a feller who talks to himself is either rich or crazy and, though I was well enough fixed to keep the wolf from the door, I wa'n't by no means so crazy as to leave the door open and take chances—"Zebulon Snow," says I, "you're forty-eight year old and blessedly single. All your life you've been haulin' ropes, or bossin' fo'mast hands, or tryin' to make harbor in a fog. Now that you've got an anchor to wind'ard—now that the one talent you put under the stock exchange napkin has spread out so that you have to have a tablecloth to tote it home in, don't you be a fool. Don't plant it again, cal'latin' to fill a mains'l next time, 'cause you won't do it. Take what you've got and be thankful—and careful. You go ashore at Ostable, where you was born, and settle down and be somebody."
That's about what I said to myself, and that's what I started to do. I made Ostable on the next mornin's train. The town had changed a whole lot since I left it, mainly on account of so many summer folks buyin' and buildin' everywhere, especially along the water front. The few reg'lar inhabitants that I knew seemed to be glad to see me, which I took as a sort of compliment, for it don't always foller by a consider'ble sight. I got into the depot wagon—the same horse was drawin' it, I judged, that Eben Hendricks had bought when I was a boy—and asked to be carted to the Travelers' Inn. It appeared that there wa'n't any Travelers' Inn now, that is to say, the name of it had been changed to the Poquit House; "Poquit" bein' Injun or Portygee or somethin' foreign.
But the name was the only thing about that hotel that was changed. The grub was the same and the wallpaper on the rooms they showed to me looked about the same age as I was, and wa'n't enough handsomer to count, either. I hired a couple of them rooms, one to sleep in and smoke in, and t'other to entertain the parson in, if he should call, which—unless the profession had changed, too—I judged he would do pretty quick. I had the rooms cleaned and papered, bought some dyspepsy medicine to offset the meals I was likely to have, and settled down to be what Mr. Pike had called a "gentleman of leisure."
Fust three months 'twas fine. At the end of the second three it commenced to get a little mite dull. In about two more I found my mind was shrinkin' so that the little mean cat-talks at the breakfast table was beginnin' to seem interestin' and important. Then I knew 'twas time to doctor up with somethin' besides dyspepsy pills. Ossification was settin' in and I'd got to do somethin' to keep me interested, even if I paid for Pike's hats for the next generation.
You see, there was such a sameness to the programme. Turn out in the mornin', eat and listen to gossip, go out and take a walk, smoke, talk with folks I met—more gossip—come back and eat again, go over and watch the carpenters on the latest summer cottage, smoke some more, eat some more, and then go down to the Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store, or to the post-office, and set around with the gang till bedtime. That may be an excitin' life for a jellyfish, or a reg'lar Ostable loafer—but it didn't suit me.
I was feelin' that way, and pretty desperate, the night when Winthrop Adams Beanblossom—which wa'n't the critter's name but is nigh enough to the real one for him to cruise under in this yarn—told me the story of his life and started me on the v'yage that come to mean so much to me. I didn't know 'twas goin' to mean much of anything when I started in. But that night Winthrop got me to paddlin', so's to speak, and, later on, come Jim Henry Jacobs to coax me into deeper water; and, after that, the combination of them two and Miss Letitia Lee Pendlebury shoved me in all under, so 'twas a case of stickin' to it or swimmin' or drownin'.
I was in the Ostable Store that evenin', as usual. 'Twas almost nine o'clock and the rest of the bunch around the stove had gone home. I was fillin' my pipe and cal'latin' to go, too—if you can call a tavern like the Poquit House a home. Beanblossom was in behind the desk, his funny little grizzly-gray head down over a pile of account books and papers, his specs roostin' on the end of his thin nose, and his pen scratchin' away like a stray hen in a flower bed.