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Page 34
"The head-king of all Jonahs," groaned Tom Platt. "Oh, Salters,
Salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep?"
"How could I tell?" said poor Salters, as the schooner swung up.
She might have been the very Flying Dutchman, so foul, draggled,
and unkempt was every rope and stick aboard. Her old-style
quarterdeck was some or five feet high, and her rigging flew
knotted and tangled like weed at a wharf-end. She was running
before the wind--yawing frightfully--her staysail let down to act as a
sort of extra foresail,--"scandalized," they call it,--and her foreboom
guyed out over the side. Her bowsprit cocked up like an
old-fashioned frigate's; her jib-boom had been fished and spliced
and nailed and clamped beyond further repair; and as she hove
herself forward, and sat down on her broad tail, she looked for all
the world like a blouzy, frouzy, bad old woman sneering at a
decent girl.
"That's Abishal," said Salters. "Full o' gin an' Judique men, an' the
judgments o' Providence layin' fer him an' never takin' good holt
He's run in to bait, Miquelon way."
"He'll run her under," said Long Jack. "That's no rig fer this
weather."
"Not he, 'r he'd'a done it long ago," Disko replied. "Looks 's if he
cal'lated to run us under. Ain't she daown by the head more 'n
natural, Tom Platt?"
"Ef it's his style o' loadin' her she ain't safe," said the sailor slowly.
"Ef she's spewed her oakum he'd better git to his pumps mighty
quick."
The creature threshed up, wore round with a clatter and raffle, and
lay head to wind within ear-shot.
A gray-beard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled
something Harvey could not understand. But Disko's face
darkened. "He'd resk every stick he hez to carry bad news. Says
we're in fer a shift o' wind. He's in fer worse. Abishal! Abi-shal!"
He waved his arm up and down with the gesture of a man at the
pumps, and pointed forward. The crew mocked him and laughed.
"Jounce ye, an' strip ye an' trip ye!" yelled Uncle Abishal. "A livin'
gale--a livin' gale. Yab! Cast up fer your last trip, all you Gloucester
haddocks. You won't see Gloucester no more, no more!"
"Crazy full--as usual," said Tom Platt. "Wish he hadn't spied us,
though."
She drifted out of hearing while the gray-head yelled something
about a dance at the Bay of Bulls and a dead man in the foc'sle.
Harvey shuddered. He had seen the sloven tilled decks and the
savage-eyed crew.
"An' that's a fine little floatin' hell fer her draught," said Long Jack.
"I wondher what mischief he's been at ashore."
"He's a trawler," Dan explained to Harvey, "an' he runs in fer bait
all along the coast. Oh, no, not home, he don't go. He deals along
the south an' east shore up yonder." He nodded in the direction of
the pitiless Newfoundland beaches. "Dad won't never take me
ashore there. They're a mighty tough crowd--an' Abishal's the
toughest. You saw his boat? Well, she's nigh seventy year old, they
say; the last o' the old Marblehead heel-tappers. They don't make
them quarterdecks any more. Abishal don't use Marblehead,
though. He ain't wanted there. He jes' drif's araound, in debt,
trawlin' an' cussin' like you've heard. Bin a Jonah fer years an'
years, he hez. 'Gits liquor frum the Feecamp boats fer makin' spells
an' selling winds an' such truck. Crazy, I guess."
"'Twon't be any use underrunnin' the trawl to-night," said Tom Platt,
with quiet despair. "He come alongside special to cuss us. I'd give
my wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old Ohio 'fore
we quit floggin'. Jest abaout six dozen, an' Sam Mocatta layin' 'em
on criss-cross!"
The disheveled "heel-tapper" danced drunkenly down wind, and
all eyes followed her. Suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph
voice: "It wass his own death made him speak so! He iss fey--fey, I
tell you! Look!" She sailed into a patch of watery sunshine three or
four miles distant. The patch dulled and faded out, and even as the
light passed so did the schooner. She dropped into a hollow
and--was not.
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