He marched up and down the sidewalk, and through the skirl of gulls in a storm, swept a tune that made the meat shake on my bones.
Once mother shrieked out, trying to make him stop, but he went on pacing in front of her, to and fro, with his eyes on her all the time, peering straight through her, and all the grief of all the world in the skirl and the wail, and that hopeless awful tune. She covered her face with her hands, trying to hold while the great sobs shook her, and she reeled like a tree in a gale, until she fell on her knees, until she threw herself on the corpse, and cried, and cried.
CHAPTER II
THE HAPPY SHIP
Cap'n Mose of the Zedekiah W. Baggs 'e was a Sunday Christian. All up along 'e'd wear a silk hat, the only one on the Labrador. Yes. Sundays 'e'd be ashore talkin' predestination an' grace out of a book 'e kep' in 'is berth, but never a word about fish or the state of the ice. Mother'd been raised to a belief in Christians, so when Mose dropped in at her shack, admirin' how she cooked, she'd be pleased all up the back, and have him right in to dinner. He'd kiss me, talkin' soft about little children. Yes. That's how 'e got me away to sea as boy on a sealin' voyage, without paying me any wages.
Mother never knew what Cap'n Mose was like on week-days, and Sunday didn't happen aboard of the Zedekiah. I remember hidin' away at the back of Ole Oleson's bunk, axing God please to turn me into an animal. Any sort would do, because I seen men kind to animals. You know an animal mostly consists of a pure heart, and four legs, which is a great advantage. Queer world though, if all our prayers was granted.
Belay thar. A man sets out to tell adventures, and if his victims don't find some excuse for getting absent, he owes them all the happiness he's got. It's mean to hand out sorrow to persons bearing their full share already. So we proceeds to the night when I ran from the Zedekiah, and joined the Happy Ship.
We lay in the big ice pack off Cape Breton, getting a load of seal pelts. All hands was out on the ice while daylight lasted, clubbing seals, gathering the carcasses into pans, sculping, then towing the hides aboard to salt 'em down.
We got our supper, then turned in, bone-weary, but the ship groaned so that I daresn't sleep. A ship ain't got no mouth to give her age away, and yet with ships and women it's pretty much the same, for the younger they are the less they need to be painted. The Zedekiah was old, just paint an' punk, and she did surely groan to the thrust of the pack. I was too scared to sleep, so I went up on deck.