"Na, na, cappen," answered Scotty, as sadly as the captain. "'Tis na fault o' yourn, nor mine; it's my luck, and it'll ne'er change till I git to New York and find my old skipper. I'm under a curse, I am."
But the captain had gone.
"Want to get to New York?" asked a voice behind him.
"That I do," said Scotty, shortly, as he faced the speaker. It was the captain of the schooner.
"I'm a man short," he said. "Where's your clo's?"
"On my back, cappen. I lost twa months' pay the noo, and can't repleenish my wardrobe."
"It's fine weather, and you won't need any. I pay twenty a month. Turn to."
Scotty went to New York in this schooner—that is, he went as far as the Sandy Hook Lightship, where the skipper, a man of poor judgment, mistakingly put about under the bow of an outward-bound steamer, which had slowed down to discharge her pilot, and which went ahead too soon for the welfare of that schooner. The impact was not dead on—it was a glancing blow that the schooner received, and it only carried away the weather main rigging and the davit on the stern. But Scotty was at work in this weather main rigging, and foreseeing disaster to the frail spider web to which he clung, he leaped for the big stockless anchor of the steamer just before it caught the shrouds. On this he sat perched, while wire rope snapped over and around him, and as the steamer forged ahead, managed to make himself heard over the shouts and curses with which the two skippers paid their parting compliments. He was lifted up and taken to the captain—a man black in the face from rage and overstrained vocabulary.
The captain greeted Scotty with inarticulate snorts.
"And can ye put me on some craft bound in, cappen?" asked Scotty, anxiously.