Two Knapsacks | Page 7

haul on them halliards afore you're too mighty ready to belay, with your stupid cackle."
So the indentured apprentices and their knapsacks got on board, while Sylvanus, alias The Crew, stopped laughing, and put a pound or two extra on to the halliards. "Wilks," said Coristine, "it'll puzzle the women to find us out on our ocean home."
Wilkinson saw the captain hauling at the halliards of the after-mainsail and went to his assistance, while Coristine, doffing his coat, lent a hand to The Crew, when, by their combined efforts, the sails were all hoisted and the schooner floated away from the pier. The lawyer walked over the deck with a nautical air, picking up all loose ends of rope and coiling them neatly over his left arm. The coils he deposited carefully about the feet of the masts, to the astonishment of Wilkinson, who regarded his friend as a born seaman, and to the admiration of the captain and The Crew. The schoolmaster felt that Wordsworth was not the thing for the water; he should have brought Falconer or Byron. So he stuck to the captain, who was a very intelligent man of his class, and discussed with him the perils and advantages of lake navigation. They neither of them smoked, nor, said the captain, did he often drink; when he did, he liked to have it good. Thereupon Wilkinson produced what remained in his flask, which his commanding officer took down neat at a gulp, signifying, as he ruefully gazed upon the depleted vessel, that a man might go long before he'd get such stuff as that. Then the conversation turned on the prohibitory Scott Act, which opened the vials of the old man's wrath, for making "the biggest lot of hypocrites and law-breakers and unlicensed shebeens and drunkards the country had ever seen." The schoolmaster, as in duty bound, tried to defend the Act, but all in vain, so he was glad to change the subject and discuss the crops, politics, and education. This conversation took place at what the captain called "the hellum", against the tiller of which he occasionally allowed his apprentice to lean his back while he attended to other work. Wilkinson was proud. This was genuine navigation, this steering a large vessel with your back; any mere landsman, he now saw, could coil up ropes like Coristine. The subject of this reflection was quite happy in the bow, chumming with The Crew. Smoking their pipes together, Sylvanus confided to his apprentice that a sailor's life was the lonesomest life out of jail, when the cap'n was that quiet and stand off like as one he knowed that wasn't far away, nuther. Coristine sympathized with him. "The bossest time that ever was on this yere old Susan Thomas," he continued, "was last summer wonst when the cap'n's niece, she come along fer a trip. There was another gal along with her, a regular stunner, she was. Wot her name was I raley can't tell, 'cos that old owl of a cap'n, whenever he'd speak to her, allers said Miss Do Please. I reckon that's what she used to say to him, coaxin' like, and he kep' it up on her. Well, we was becalmed three days right out on the lake, and I had to row the blessed dingy in the bilin' sun over to Snake Island to get bread and meat from the Snakes."
"From the snakes!" ejaculated Coristine, "why this beats Elijah's ravens all to nothing."
"Oh, the Snakes is Injuns, and Miss Carmichael, that's the cap'n's gal, says their rale name is Kinapick."
"Look here, Sylvanus, what did you say the captain's name is?"
"Oh, the old pill's name is Thomas, like the schooner, but, you see, he married one of the pretty Carruthers gals, and a good match it was; for, I tell ye, them Carruthers gals hold their heads mighty high. Why, the ansomest of them married Dr. Carmichael that was member, and, of they did say he married below him, there wasn't a prouder nor a handsomer woman in all the country. There's a brother of the Carruthers gals lives on a farm out in Grey, and he took up with a good lookin' Irish gal that was lady's maid or some such truck. That's marryin' below yourself ef you like, but, bless you, Miss Carmichael don't bear him no spite for it. She goes and stays with him times in the holidays, just like she does along o' the old man here. My! what a three days o' singin' and fun it was when them two gals was aboard; never see nothing like it afore nor sence."
"By George!" groaned the lawyer.
"What's up, Mister? turned sick, eh? smell o' the tar too much fer your narves? It do make some city folks a bit