“Shiver my timbers, sir!”
With this forcible and exceedingly salty ejaculation, the old sailor with the wooden leg dropped the newspaper to the walk, and his spectacles along with it, and springing up, trampled upon them both.
But in his great excitement he noticed neither the torn paper nor the ruined glasses. He stumped up and down the walk for several moments before he became calm enough to think coherently.
In fact, the blue-coated policeman on the corner had begun to eye him suspiciously.
“The Silver Swan afloat—a derelict!” he muttered. “This ’ere is a sitiwation I didn’t look for. An’ then, them blasted cruisers are liable to go down there and blow her into kingdom come any minute. The Silver Swan on Reef Eight was bad enough, but the Silver Swan afloat, at the mercy of the gales as well as other vessels, is worse!
“Now, what in creation’ll I do about it? I haven’t heard from the boy yet, and there’s little enough time as it is. Why, she might sink ’most any time with all them di’monds the cap’n told about aboard her!
“I’ll take a steamer to get down there ahead of them confounded iron pots” (by this disrespectful term did he designate Uncle Sam’s cruisers), “but who under the canopy’s got a steamer to charter?
“By the great horn spoon, I have it!” he exclaimed, after a moment’s thought. “Adoniram Pepper is just the fellow.”
With this declaration he jammed his hat on his head, and stumped off as rapidly as one good leg and one wooden one could carry him, toward the shipping merchant’s office on Water Street.