As Ned reads this friendly message, his face begins to burn—perhaps from the heat of the coals of fire thus heaped upon his head; for the trouble between himself and his room-mate had begun about these very same rubber boots. Ned's had been accidentally washed overboard by a big sea a few days previous, he having laid them on the main hatch to dry; and vainly had he tried to buy this pair of Eph, who wore thick "cow-hides" in ordinary weather, keeping the rubber ones for extraordinary.
"You're a mean, contemptible skinflint, Eph Jackson," Ned had angrily exclaimed.
"Mebbe I be," returned Eph, as a dull red tinged his homely face; "but, all the same, you can't buy them boots: I've got another use for 'em."
High words followed. Ned called Eph "a hay-seed-haired countryman." Eph, in return, taunted Ned with hanging back when a royal had to be stowed or the flying jib furled; "a sogerin' skulk" was the uncomplimentary epithet which he applied to his room-mate, if I remember aright. Since which time, as I have said, no word had passed between the two until Eph had broken the ice with his New-Year's greeting.
"He's not such a bad lot, after all," said Ned, aloud. "The boots are a couple of sizes too large," he added, as he pulled them on over a pair of dry socks; "but they'll keep out the wet and cold, anyway."
But there was a sort of unconscious patronage in his way of accepting the welcome present, after all; for Ned Rand's father, who owned two-thirds of the Emerald, was a wealthy ship-builder of East Boston, while Eph Jackson was an uncultured young fellow from the country. Ned was making this his first sea-voyage "just for the fun of it"; Eph, because he had an old mother up among the Berkshire hills, for whom every cent of his wages was meant.
"Some day I cal'late to be a officer, an' git my forty or fifty dollars a month," said Eph, sturdily, to himself.
Ned had obtained his parents' consent that he should make a trial voyage with Captain Elton. "But don't favor him, Captain," privately suggested Mr. Rand.
"Favor him!" echoed the plain-spoken Captain; "I guess not. There's no favor shown aboard ships. Your boy will be treated the same as that long-legged young chap from the country who shipped yesterday—no better and no worse." Which assurance Ned has found to his extreme disgust is carried out to the very letter.
But the voice of the storm without grows louder and fiercer.