“That’s too bad. Too bad. Too bad,” said he. “I paid two dollars for that pig.” And his voice was as mournful as the sound of the sea washing through the ribs of a lost ship.
“Poor little pig,” muttered Jim, and he tried to look astern from his place under the top-gallant-forecastle. “Poor little pig!” And the tears ran down his dirty, sun-bronzed face.
“Wonder!” cried Dan, coming forward; “there’s a murderer for you. Crying over an old pig he won’t get a taste of, hide nor hair.”
“It’s all that young devil’s fault,” mused the skipper. “The master is above the servant an’ the servant ain’t the master’s equal. So says the Holy Scriptures. When a man takes up with them what is below him, he is gone wrong. That’s Jim with the pig. Yes, sir, the Scriptures say them very words somewhere,—I can’t call to mind exactly where,—but they are so. If they ain’t I’ll make them so, and I’ll hang that Irish dog when I get him to ’Frisco.” And he did.
MY PIRATE
WE were sitting in old Professor Frisbow’s room in the West Coast Museum, and our host had been listening to accounts of wonderful adventures on deep-water. Each had spoken, and it was Frisbow’s turn. We settled ourselves comfortably, and he began:
“Few people remember the old town of St. Augustine as it was before the war, with its old coquina houses and flat, unpaved streets, that abounded with sand-fleas in dry weather and turned into swamps of mud and sand when it rained. Those who can look so far back through life’s vista will remember its peculiar inhabitants.
“The Southern negro, sleeping in the hot sunshine on the plaza, or loafing about the sea-wall talking to the white ‘cracker,’ was, of course, the most numerous; but there were also the Spaniards and Minorcans, who married and intermarried among themselves, that made up a large part of the population.
“St. Augustine was not a thriving town. Its business could be seen almost any morning quite early, when a few long, narrow, dugout canoes, with a swarthy Minorcan rowing on one side, and a companion sitting aft paddling on the other, would come around the ‘Devil’s Elbow’ in the Matanzas River, and glide swiftly and silently up to a break in the sea-wall and deposit their loads of mullet or whiting. Then the canoes would disappear with their owners, after a little haggling had been indulged in between the latter and the purchasers of the fish, and the quiet of the long, hot day would begin.
“It is astonishing how lazy one may become under the influence of that blue, semi-tropical sky, with the warm, gentle breeze from the southern ocean rippling the clear, green waters of the bay. Life seems a bright dream, and any unwonted exertion causes a jar to the nerves such as one feels when rudely awakened from a sound, pleasant sleep. During the daytime in summer no one but the negro and a few long-haired Minorcans would tempt the torrid sunshine; and even I, with my passion for sport, would seldom show my pith helmet to the sun during July and August.