A Message From the Sea | Page 4

did when he was pleased--and said,
-
"A mighty sing'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of
my life!"
Captain Jorgan had not been through the village, but had come down to
the pier by a winding side-road, to have a preliminary look at it from
the level of his own natural element. He had seen many things and
places, and had stowed them all away in a shrewd intellect and a
vigorous memory. He was an American born, was Captain Jorgan,--a
New-Englander,--but he was a citizen of the world, and a combination
of most of the best qualities of most of its best countries.
For Captain Jorgan to sit anywhere in his long-skirted blue coat and
blue trousers, without holding converse with everybody within
speaking distance, was a sheer impossibility. So the captain fell to
talking with the fishermen, and to asking them knowing questions
about the fishery, and the tides, and the currents, and the race of water

off that point yonder, and what you kept in your eye, and got into a line
with what else when you ran into the little harbour; and other nautical
profundities. Among the men who exchanged ideas with the captain
was a young fellow, who exactly hit his fancy,--a young fisherman of
two or three and twenty, in the rough sea-dress of his craft, with a
brown face, dark curling hair, and bright, modest eyes under his
Sou'wester hat, and with a frank, but simple and retiring manner, which
the captain found uncommonly taking. "I'd bet a thousand dollars," said
the captain to himself, "that your father was an honest man!"
"Might you be married now?" asked the captain, when he had had some
talk with this new acquaintance.
"Not yet."
"Going to be?" said the captain.
"I hope so."
The captain's keen glance followed the slightest possible turn of the
dark eye, and the slightest possible tilt of the Sou'wester hat. The
captain then slapped both his legs, and said to himself, -
"Never knew such a good thing in all my life! There's his sweetheart
looking over the wall!"
There was a very pretty girl looking over the wall, from a little platform
of cottage, vine, and fuchsia; and she certainly dig not look as if the
presence of this young fisherman in the landscape made it any the less
sunny and hopeful for her.
Captain Jorgan, having doubled himself up to laugh with that hearty
good-nature which is quite exultant in the innocent happiness of other
people, had undoubted himself, and was going to start a new subject,
when there appeared coming down the lower ladders of stones, a man
whom he hailed as "Tom Pettifer, Ho!" Tom Pettifer, Ho, responded
with alacrity, and in speedy course descended on the pier.
"Afraid of a sun-stroke in England in November, Tom, that you wear
your tropical hat, strongly paid outside and paper-lined inside, here?"
said the captain, eyeing it.
"It's as well to be on the safe side, sir," replied Tom.
"Safe side!" repeated the captain, laughing. "You'd guard against a
sun-stroke, with that old hat, in an Ice Pack. Wa'al! What have you
made out at the Post-office?"
"It is the Post-office, sir."

"What's the Post-office?" said the captain.
"The name, sir. The name keeps the Post-office."
"A coincidence!" said the captain. "A lucky bit! Show me where it is.
Good-bye, shipmates, for the present! I shall come and have another
look at you, afore I leave, this afternoon."
This was addressed to all there, but especially the young fisherman; so
all there acknowledged it, but especially the young fisherman. "He's a
sailor!" said one to another, as they looked after the captain moving
away. That he was; and so outspeaking was the sailor in him, that
although his dress had nothing nautical about it, with the single
exception of its colour, but was a suit of a shore-going shape and form,
too long in the sleeves and too short in the legs, and too
unaccommodating everywhere, terminating earthward in a pair of
Wellington boots, and surmounted by a tall, stiff hat, which no mortal
could have worn at sea in any wind under heaven; nevertheless, a
glimpse of his sagacious, weather-beaten face, or his strong, brown
hand, would have established the captain's calling. Whereas Mr.
Pettifer--a man of a certain plump neatness, with a curly whisker, and
elaborately nautical in a jacket, and shoes, and all things
correspondent--looked no more like a seaman, beside Captain Jorgan,
than he looked like a sea-serpent.
The two climbed high up the village,--which had the most arbitrary
turns and twists in it, so that the cobbler's house came dead across the
ladder, and to have held a reasonable course, you must have gone
through his house,