“Then you are not going to have them up for a sort of a dessert?”
“Dessert! I should say not. I hope I’ll never have to see one, much less eat one again. They would always remind me of drifting through a fog-bank in an open dory.”
All of which goes to show how very differently a hungry man and a well-fed man may view the same object.
The sea still remained unruffled by a breath, and after breakfast Captain McCloud said, “So long as there’s nothing we can do until we get some wind, we’ve a chance for a yarn. If you’d like to hear about it I’ll tell you how I happen to be aboard this brig, and how she got into the sad condition you see her in now.”
As both Breeze and Wolfe expressed the strongest desire to hear the captain’s story, he related it to them as follows:
“You remember, Breeze, when I left home in the old Sea Robin last October for the Banks I said that if all went well I’d be back in time for Christmas?”
“Yes, sir, I remember.”
“Well, we made a fair trip, but did not fill up as fast as I had hoped we would, so that it got to be pretty near Christmas-day before we saw our way clear to picking up our anchor and heading for Gloucester. By-the-way, have any of the Robin’s crew ever turned up?”
“No, sir; not one of them. You were reported as seen on the 15th of December, but since then not a word has come from you until this day.”
"Poor fellows! they’re long since gone, then. Well, as I was saying, we were all ready to start for home the day before Christmas, when there came on such a gale of wind as I’ve rarely seen in these latitudes. By night it was a hurricane, and such a sea was running that it seemed as though each wave must swallow the schooner as it came rushing-down on her. We were hove-to under a three-reefed foresail, and the riding-sail with a bag-reef tied in it. About nine o’clock in the evening, I’d been on deck so long, and was so drenched and chilled, that I stepped into the forecastle to get a cup of coffee. There was one other man there, poor Dick Simonds--you remember him, Breeze--and the cook. The rest were either on deck or in the cabin.