Upon this Jalap Coombs cautiously approached the sky-light, and peered down into the cabin. Then he as cautiously tiptoed back to where Phil was standing. “I ruther guess we’d best leave him alone to fight it out,” he said. “He’s a born fighter, Cap’n Duff is, an’ he’s had ’em afore. As my friend old Kite Roberson uster say consarning fits: ‘When a ordinary seaman takes a notion to indulge in ’em, roll him on deck, douse him with buckets of salt-water, and otherwise wrastle ’em out of him, fer he ’ain’t no business with any such luxuries. With a cap’n, though, it’s diffrunt. He’s a priverleged character, and when he feels inclined fer a fit, he wants to enjoy it, and have it out without interference, same as ef it war a glass o’ grog. So never interrupt a cap’n’s fits ef you want to have peace and quietness aboard ship.’ That’s what old Kite uster say, and he must er knowed, ’cause he’d had more millions of experience than most.”
“Who was this Mr. Robinson?” asked Phil.
“Who! Kite—old Kite Roberson? ’Tain’t likely now that ye never heerd of him? Why, he was one of the best-known men. By his own ’count he’d been ’round the world more times than there is parallels of latitood, and some of his charts looked like spider-webs, they war kivered so thick with his tracks. Why, he come from the same place as me, old Kite did, and sometimes it makes me feel prouder’n a mere mortal man orter feel to think that him and me was fashioned outer the same clay, as it war, and brung up on the same air.”
“It must be a great satisfaction,” remarked Phil, politely. Then, to show his interest in the subject, he asked: “But where is your native place, Mr. Coombs? You are a down-Easter, are you not?”
“Sartain I am,” replied the mate. “A genuine down-Easter is the one thing on this watery earth I can surely claim to be. But whether I’m a Britisher or a Yankee is the problem I’m wearing my life out trying to solve.”
“That seems queer,” said Phil, reflectively.
“Queer ain’t no name fer it. It’s simply redickerlous. Ye see, when they settled the boundary ’twixt Maine and the Provinces, they run it plumb through my father’s house, and as nigh as I can figger I was born straddle of the line. After that I was brung up fust on one side, and then on t’other; so that ef one man says I’m a Britisher and another says I’m a Yank, they ain’t nuther of ’em lying, nor yet they ain’t telling the truth. Sometimes I feel as ef I war a British subjeck, and again like a full-blown American citizen. It depends mostly on the weather. When it’s damp and foggy, like it is now, I ginerally feels like a subjeck. Old Kite Roberson he uster say—”
Just then came the note of a siren fog-horn over the waters from dead ahead. A dense mist had rolled in from the sea, obscuring the light on Race Island, the most southerly of the few light-stations maintained on the coast of British Columbia. All the time that he was talking with Phil, Jalap Coombs had also been keeping a sharp lookout for this light. Now, at the first note of its siren, he sprang up, transformed in an instant from a shambling, garrulous “subjeck,” as he called himself, into an alert and thoroughly capable Yankee sailor.
“Ready about!” he shouted, in clear, crisp tones. “Hard a-lee!” And a minute later, as the lively craft spun round to a deafening accompaniment of rattling blocks and slatting canvas, “Draw away!” With this the schooner settled comfortably down on her new course, and bending gracefully over before a damp sea-breeze, sped swiftly away from the threatened dangers of Race Island rocks.
About this time Ebenezer, the black cook, announced that supper was ready in the cabin, and the mate, after a long careful look both to windward and leeward, suggested to Phil that they might as well go below and “stow a cargo of chuck.”