“But you're a gentleman,” said the skipper, doubtfully eyeing him, and his velvet dress, and his black sombrero with its eagle's plume. “I want a rare, rough, able seaman, for there'll like to be foul weather. She looks too fair to last,” he concluded, with a glance upward at the sky.
He was a Liverpool man, master and owner of his own rakish-looking little black-hulled craft, that, rumor was wont to say, was not averse to a bit of slaving, if she found herself in far seas, with a likely run before her.
“You're a swell, that's what you are,” emphasized the skipper. “You bean't no sort of use to me.”
“Wait a second,” answered Cecil. “Did you ever chance to hear of a schooner called 'Regina'?”
The skipper's face lighted in a moment.
“Her as was in the Biscay, July come two years? Her as drove through the storm like a mad thing, and flew like a swallow, when everything was splitting and foundering, and shipping seas around her? Her as was the first to bear down to the great 'Wrestler,' a-lying there hull over in water, and took aboard all as ever she could hold o' the passengers; a-pitching out her own beautiful cabin fittings to have as much room for the poor wretches as ever she could? Be you a-meaning her?”
Cecil nodded assent.
“She was my yacht, that's all; and I was without a captain through that storm. Will you think me a good enough sailor now?”
The skipper wrung his hand till he nearly wrung it off.
“Good enough! Blast my timbers! There aren't one will beat you in any waters. Come on, sir, if so be as you wishes it; but never a stroke of work shall you do atween my decks. I never did think as how one of your yachting-nobs could ever be fit to lay hold of a tiller; but, hang me, if the Club make such sailors as you it's a rare 'un! Lord a mercy! Why, my wife was in the 'Wrestler.' I've heard her tell scores of times as how she was almost dead when that little yacht came through a swaling sea, that was all heaving and roaring round the wreck, and as how the swell what owned it gave his cabin up to the womenkind, and had his swivel guns and his handsome furniture pitched overboard, that he might be able to carry more passengers, and fed 'em, and gave 'em champagne all around, and treated 'em like a prince, till he ran 'em straight into Brest Harbor. But, damn me! that ever a swell like you should—”