After a while the pilot said: “Look again, Mr Slick, can you make her out now?”
“Why,” sais I, “she is only a brigantine; but ask the skipper.”
He took his glass and scrutinized her closely, and as he replaced it in the binnacle said: “We are going to have southerly weather I think; she loomed very large when I first saw her, and I took her for a ship; but now she seems to be an hermaphrodite. It’s of no consequence to us however what she is, and we shall soon near her.”
“Beyond that vessel,” said the pilot, “there is a splendid harbour, and as there has been a head wind for some time, I have no doubt there are many coasters in there, from the masters of whom you can obtain much useful information on the object of your visit, while we can drive a profitable trade among them and the folks ashore. How beautifully these harbours are situated,” he continued, “for carrying on the fisheries, and Nova Scotian though I be, I must say, I do think in any other part of the world there would be large towns here.”
“I think so too, Eldad,” sais I, “but British legislation is at the bottom of all your misfortunes, after all, and though you are as lazy as sloths, and as idle as that fellow old Blowhard saw, who lay down on the grass all day to watch the vessels passing, and observe the motion of the crows, the English, by breaking up your monopoly of inter-colonial and West India trade and throwing it open to us, not only without an equivalent, but in the face of our prohibitory duties, are the cause of all your poverty and stagnation. They are rich and able to act like fools if they like in their own affairs, but it was a cruel thing to sacrifice you, as they have done, and deprive you of the only natural carrying trade and markets you had. The more I think of it the less I blame you. It is a wicked mockery to lock men up, and then taunt them with want of enterprise, and tell them they are idle.”
“Look at that vessel again, Sir,” said Eldad; “she don’t make much headway, does she?”
“Well, I took the glass again and examined her minutely, and I never was so stumpt in my life.
“Pilot,” said I, “is that the same vessel?”
“The identical,” said he.
“I vow to man,” sais I, “as I am a livin’ sinner, that is neither a ship, nor a brigantine, nor a hermaphrodite, but a topsail schooner, that’s a fact. What in natur’ is the meanin’ of all this? Perhaps the captain knows,” so I called him again.