“Yes, take our departure. Montauk is yonder, just coming in sight; only some three hours’ run from this spot. When we get there, the open ocean will lie before us, and give me the open sea, and I’ll not call the king my uncle.”
“Was he your uncle, Capt. Spike?”
“Only in a philanthropic way, Madam Budd. Yes, let us get a good offing, and a rapping to’gallant breeze, and I do not think I should care much for two of Uncle Sam’s new-fashioned revenue craft, one on each side of me.”
“How delightful do I find such conversation, Rose! It’s as much like your poor, dear uncle’s, as one pea is like another. ‘Yes,’ he used to say, too, ‘let me only have one on each side of me, and a wrapper round the topgallant sail to hold the breeze, and I’d not call the king my uncle.’ Now I think of it, he used to talk about the king as his uncle, too.”
“It was all talk, aunty. He had no uncle, and what is more, he had no king.”
“That’s quite true, Miss Rose,” rejoined Spike, attempting a bow, which ended in a sort of a jerk. “It is not very becoming in us republicans to be talking of kings, but a habit is a habit. Our forefathers had kings, and we drop into their ways without thinking of what we are doing. Fore-topgallant yard, there?”
“Sir.”
“Keep a bright look-out, ahead. Let me know the instant you make any thing in the neighborhood of Montauk.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“As I was saying, Madam Budd, we seamen drop into our forefather’s ways. Now, when I was a youngster, I remember, one day, that we fell in with a ketch—you know, Miss Rose, what a ketch is, I suppose?”