"It don't do no such thing," contended Abner vigorously. "It's a real high-toned proposal and any woman ought to be satisfied with it. The man that wrote that must have known an awful lot about women. Now you go ahead and learn that proposal and there you be all ready for the parson."
"Yes, 'there I be,'" mimicked the captain ungratefully. "It would take a college professor to say them words fast, and I'm only a plain sailor man."
But in spite of his sarcasm the captain attacked his self-appointed task with the grim determination that had made him respected in every port wherever the big deep water tramp, of which he was the proud master, had dropped her huge mudhook.
The steamer was laid up at Boston, having a splendid collection of tropical barnacles scraped from her stout hull. If it had not been for the barnacles, the captain would not have been ashore.
For a week the captain studied strenuously, hardly allowing himself time to sleep. Abner offered to assist him at rehearsals and every afternoon he drilled Captain Enoch diligently. He was a firm disciplinarian and insisted upon his pupil's being letter perfect. Book in hand, he corrected the captain vigorously.
"It's 'es-teemed lady'" he admonished the captain. "You said 'steamed.' M'lissy ain't cooked. An' you stutter yet when you come to that word right after painful. Can't you say it plainer?"
"'Trep-trep-trepidation,'" stammered the captain again. "Say it yourself," he dared Abner. "I'll bet you can't do no better."
"I ain't tryin' to say it," Abner reminded him with dignity. "If I was I'd make it out someway. I wouldn't be beat by any word ever put in a dictionary. You're doin' better," he complimented the captain, after the sixth recital. "Mebbe you'll git it after awhile."
But when Captain Enoch felt that his monitor was most needed and had begun to look hopefully forward to a one hundred per cent rehearsal, Abner took a sudden notion to go sword fishing.
"The time to go sword fishin' is when sword fish are due," he insisted with Solomonic wisdom. "I'm going to be off Nantucket shoals by daybreak to-morrow."