THE SKIPPER TELLS OF "THE GLORIOUS, FASCINATING SEA."
See Chapter II.
THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED
BEING THE SHORE LOG OF CAP'N AARON SPROUL
BY
HOLMAN DAY
AUTHOR OF"THE RAMRODDERS"
"KING SPRUCE" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
MCMXI
BOOKS BY
HOLMAN DAY
THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED. Post 8vo . . $1.50
THE RAMRODDERS. Post 8vo . . . . . . . . . $1.50
KING SPRUCE. Ill'd. Post 8vo . . . . . . . . $1.50
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HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N.Y.
COPYRIGHT, 1911. BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1911
THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED
I
Cap'n Aaron Sproul, late skipper of the Jefferson P. Benn, sat bythe bedside of his uncle, "One-arm" Jerry, and gazed into thelatter's dimming eyes.
"It ain't bein' a crowned head, but it's honer'ble," pleaded the sickman, continuing the conversation.
His eager gaze found only gloominess in his nephew's countenance.
"One way you look at it, Uncle Jed," said the Cap'n, "it's a come-downswifter'n a slide from the foretop the whole length of the boomstay.I've been master since I was twenty-four, and I'm goin' ontofifty-six now. I've licked every kind in the sailorman line, froma nigger up to Six-fingered Jack the Portugee. If it wa'n't for—ow,Josephus Henry!—for this rheumatiz, I'd be aboard the Benn thisminute with a marlinespike in my hand, and op'nin' a fresh packageof language."
"But you ain't fit for the sea no longer," mumbled One-arm Jerrythrough one corner of the mouth that paralysis had drawn awry.
"That's what I told the owners of the Benn when I fit 'em off'mme and resigned," agreed the Cap'n. "I tell ye, good skippers ain'tborn ev'ry minute—and they knowed it. I've been turnin' 'em in tenper cent. on her, and that's good property. I've got an eighth intoher myself, and with a man as good as I am to run her, I shouldn'tneed to worry about doin' anything else all my life—me a single manwith no one dependent. I reckon I'll sell. Shipmasters ain't whatthey used to be."
"Better leave it where it is," counselled Jerry, his cautious thriftdominating even in that hour of death. "Land-sharks is allus lookin'out sharp for sailormen that git on shore."
"It's why I don't dast to go into business—me that's follered thesea so long," returned the skipper, nursing his aching leg.
"Then do as I tell ye to do," said the old man on the bed. "It maybe a come-down for a man that's had men under him all his life, butit amounts to more'n five hundred a year, sure and stiddy. It'ssomething to do, and you couldn't stand it to loaf—you that's alwaysbeen so active. It ain't reskin' anything, and with all the passin'and the meetin' folks, and the gossipin' and the chattin', and allthat, all your time is took up. It's honer'ble, it's stiddy. Leaveyour money where it is, take my place, and keep this job in thefamily."
The two men were talking in a little