“Sink me if that ain’t the all-aroundest, fore an’ aft, alow an’ aloft, three skysail-yard, close-sailin’ little clipper I——”
“Anchor’s short, sir!” came Garnett’s bawl from the capstan.
“——I ever see,” continued the skipper, completely deaf and lost to everything else.
“Stand by to take the line!” roared Mr. Enlis to the tow-boat.
He was a cool, collected, and extremely profane mate, and he saw in an instant that if the tug did not get the ship’s head she would swing around with the sea-breeze and be standing up the harbor with the tide.
As it was, she kept paying off so long that the natural sailorly instinct, alive in every true deep-water navigator as to a sudden change of bearings, asserted itself in the skipper and brought him out of his dream with a start. His vision faded, and in its place he saw his vessel swinging towards Staten Island, her topsails filling partly as they hung.
“What’s the matter for’ard?” he roared. “Wake up, you——,” and he let drive a volley of oaths which for descriptive power stood far and away above any of that extensive collection of words found in the English dictionary. Had Mr. Garnett been of a literary turn of mind he might have noted them down for future reference, but he apparently did not appreciate their depth and power, for he caught them up carelessly as they came and flung them into the faces of the crew with no concern whatever.
No one was affected much by this outburst, but after the skipper had taken pains to explain that his mates and crew were all sons of female dogs, and that they had inherited a hundred other bad things besides low descent from their ancestors, he subsided a little and another voice was heard from the main-deck.
“That’s right, old man; don’t mind me. Cuss them out, I shan’t pay any attention. I’ll get used to your tune, even if I don’t to your words,” cried the pretty girl from the galley door, smiling up at him.
Jimmy Breeze looked down upon the main-deck from the break of the poop. Then he scratched his head, first on one side and then on the other. Never before in the twenty years he had followed deep water had he ever heard of a stewardess addressing a captain like this. Had she been old and ugly a belaying-pin would have found itself flying through the air in the direction of her head. But this beautiful, gentle young girl!