"Ay," says Peter; "but will you lie idle next winter?"
"Next winter?" says Tom. And he laughed. "Oh, next winter," says he, "I'll have another occupation."
"Movin' away, Tom?"
"Well," says Tom, "I is an' I isn't."
There come a day in March weather of that year when seals was thick on the floe off Gingerbread Cove. You could see un with the naked eye from Lack-a-Day Head. A hundred thousand black specks swarming over the ice three miles and more to sea! "Swiles! Swiles!" And Gingerbread Cove went mad for slaughter. 'Twas a fair time for off-shore sealing, too—a blue, still day, with the look and feel of settled weather. The ice had come in from the current with a northeasterly gale, a wonderful mixture of Arctic bergs and Labrador pans, all blinding white in the spring sun; and 'twas a field so vast, and jammed so tight against the coast, that there wasn't much more than a lane or two and a Dutchman's breeches of open water within sight from the heads. Nobody looked for a gale of off-shore wind to blow that ice afore dawn of the next day.
"A fine, soft time, lads!" says Pinch-a-Penny. "I 'low I'll go out with the Gingerbread crew."
"Skipper Peter," says Tom Lane, "you're too old a man t' be on the ice."
"Ay," says Peter, "but I wants t' bludgeon another swile afore I dies."
"But you creaks, man!"
"Ah, well," says Peter, "I'll show the lads I'm able t' haul a swile ashore."