"I guess mebbe I'll let them buttons dry a spell before I put on the last co't," he said. "No, I ain't forgot, Seth; but it takes a kind of a h'ist to get back into things that seems so long ago you kinder think they must have happened to somebodys else beside yourself.
"Wal, little gal, these two figgers is figgerheads, you see: kem off two ships I sailed in long before your two bright eyes opened on to this world of sin and—"
"Deestruction!" said Seth Weaver. "Chirk up a mite, Salem! This ain't a funeral, is it?"
"I dono but 'tis, kind of," said Salem Rock, soberly. "It's amazin' how many folks is dead and buried nowadays. Howsoever, them was two good ships, the Merchant Cap'n and the White Lady. Old Sir here, he come off the Cap'n; they made her over into a barge, and I begged for him, and they let me have him. The builder meant him for a kind of compliment to Cap'n Tree; sing'lar compliment, I used to think. Cap'n Tree was a pictur' of a man, if ever I sot eyes on one, and Old Sir always resembled a wooden image, and no special reason why he shouldn't.
"Wal, I took my fust voyage in the Merchant Cap'n; I was cabin-boy, and Mis' Tree was along; it was the last voyage but one they took together, him and her, and I was along on both. Wal, sir, I tell you 'twas a sight to see them two sail a ship together. He'd taught her navigation, and she took to it like them bees to that rocket yonder. She was as good a navigator as ever I see. We was tradin' round Borneo ways, and had laid in a cargo of spices and truck, and started on the homeward voyage. Come up a hurricane, and blowed us clear'n out of our course; went on blowin', and kep' us hitherin' and thitherin' for three days, till we didn't know where we was, nor hardly whether we was in this world at all, or that part of the next that we wasn't anyways particklar about bein' in. The third night of it was the wust, and, gorry! I tell ye 'twas awful! and then all of a suddin, like takin' off your hat, it fell dead calm. When mornin' broke, 'twas wuss yet, for there was land dead ahead, and the Merchant Cap'n driftin' on to it as fast as tide could take her. Wal, Mis' Tree had jest come up-stairs, and I tumbled up behind her, cur'us as a monkey, same as all boys be. She looks at the land, and then up at Cap'n, that quick way she had, like a bird. 'What is it?' she says; and Cap'n says, 'Solomon Islands!'
"I hadn't no notion what that meant; I thought from the sound it might be some extry fine place, like the Bible, ye know, cedars of Lebanon, and Queens of Sheby, and like that; but Cap'n's voice had a queer sound to it, and I looked at him, and he was the color of her there!" he nodded toward the white image.
"Little Mis' Tree, she never turned a hair, though she knew what I didn't, that them islands was cannibal, the wust sort, and no white man had ever come off 'em inside his own skin. She never turned a hair, only slid her mite of a hand into his, and said, quiet-like: 'We're both here, Ethan!' Cap'n give a kind of groan. 'I'd give my soul, Marshy,' he says, 'if you was safe to home!' She stood up straight—Jerusalem! I can see her now; 'twas like a flame risin', near as I can put it—and looks him in the face. 'I be to home!' she says; that was every word she said.
"Wal, word got round what land it was,—some of the crew had been that way before,—and I tell ye we was a pooty sick-lookin' crew. There warn't a breath o' wind, nor the shadow of a breath; and we kep' on a-driftin', till pooty soon we could see the shore plain, and black savages runnin' up and down, hollerin', and wavin' their arms. They see us, and were all ready for us; and pooty soon we could make out that they was pilin' up logs o' wood, makin' fires—Seth, what in time made you start me in on this yarn? 'Tain't no kind o' thing for this gal to hear."
Annie Lizzie's eyes were like brown stars, her cheeks like Old Sir's carmine stock. "Oh, Mr. Rock!" she cried, "if Mis' Tree could bear it, I guess I can. Please go on! I have to hear the rest. And besides," she added, naïvely, "of course I know you wasn't all—"
She paused.